There’s a bit in one of my favorite books, “A Wrinkle in Time,” where Mrs. Whatsit compares human life to a sonnet. Unlike other types of verse, a Shakespearean sonnet has rather strict rules: fourteen lines, in iambic pentameter, with a prescribed rhyme scheme. Yet the author has freedom within that structure.

Or, as Mrs. Whatsit says: “You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.” Whenever I feel like a victim of circumstance, I try to remember that passage.

My own situation is limited by some things beyond my control — the class I was born into, the current economic climate, pure luck — and I have unearned privileges thanks to my race and health and sexual orientation, to name just a few. But I am writing my sonnet just the same.

I think it’s pretty rich for older folks to call us the “entitlement” generation at the same time that unpaid internships, about 99 percent of which I’d hazard are illegal according to OSHA guidelines, have become the norm. How entitled can we be, really, if we don’t even demand to be paid for the work that we do? Bitching on Facebook isn’t exactly marching on Washington.

You would think that folks coming from the “Me! Generation” might be hesitant to label the young as universally spoiled good-for-nothings, but there you go. The wheel of generational conflict spins on.

Younger people will always be seen as ungrateful and spoiled, and the older generation will always hold all of the actual political and economic power until the younger generation inherits it and can label the
newest crop of twenty-somethings as “entitled.” And so on and so on, forever ad nauseum, amen.

Plus, “entitlement” is pretty a pretty meaningless zinger anyway.

I think Jon Stewart hit upon it best: “They’re really only entitlements when they’re something other people want. When it’s something you want, they’re a hallmark of a civilized society.”

I do not feel “entitled” to a society where people are fairly paid for the work they do and where we provide a safety net for people going through hard times. I just think it’s a very, very good idea.

My student-loan burden is large, but not quite as large as it could have been, thanks to some major generosity from both my parents and my undergraduate institution. Brown gave me a pretty good scholarship — I don’t remember exactly how much, but somewhere between a third and a half of tuition — and my mom basically turned over most of her income to making payments while I was in school.

I still have a chunk of debt from my undergraduate education, but the majority of the balance I’m paying off is from grad school. In retrospect, I wish I’d put a little more effort into getting some outside scholarships or grants for journalism school, because Boston University’s financial support is severely lacking.

Some colleges are now including expected monthly student-loan payments with financial aid letters, which is definitely a feature I wish was around when I was 17.

The mere thought of credit cards causes me to shudder. When I was a kid, my parents had some credit-card debt that they fell behind on, so one of the telephone skills I learned early on during my latchkey years was deflecting bill collectors. So I was always pretty aware of the traps of credit.

Still, I did run up $3,000 in credit-card debt in the summer after undergrad, but that was mostly from paying rent during the couple months before I got my disbursements in grad school. I was able to get a job late that summer to reduce the amount I’d put on the card, and then may have put a couple hundred dollars on it for my “adult wardrobe” — slacks and cardigan sweaters — which I figured at the time would be proof that I’d molted into responsible adulthood. I chipped away at that balance for a couple years by making the minimum payments, and paid it off at the end of 2011. I do not put anything on credit cards at present, and do not plan on doing so.

Dealing with student loans is one of those things that is so anxiety-inducing that you instinctively avoid it, like going to the dentist when you have a toothache. But it is always worse to avoid making the call than to confront it. Once I manage to force through the crippling anxiety, I’ve always been able to get a forbearance or lowered payment when I needed it. Grasping the Sword of Damocles is a little more comforting than just nervously looking at it hanging over your head.

I do want to point out that student debt is the only kind of debt that is not dischargeable by bankruptcy — well, unless a court rules that you are a completely hopeless case, in the vein of a quadriplegic or completely undone by mental illness. This was not always the case. It would be nice if there was some sort of Constitutional challenge to this state of things –- equal protection, anyone? — but I will not hold my breath.

My lifestyle is obviously skewed by living in New York, where paying around half of your monthly wages to rent is considered a “good deal.” Student loans and the high cost of living here definitely mean that I have to keep the belt tightened. But, to be honest, as a child of that nebulous middle to lower-middle class, I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a situation where I wasn’t on a budget. My parents weren’t exactly starving in a garret, but we lived in an apartment, not a house, and money was always a bit tight.

But luckily, I don’t have too many expensive tastes, and I’m living with a frugal Yankee boyfriend who gets very excited at the idea of making dirt-cheap cleaning products out of baking soda and shopping at the nearby (and surprisingly well-stocked) dollar store for dinner.

Would I do it all again?

If I did get some kind of Cosmic Do-Over (assuming I didn’t retain knowledge of the future that would allow me to tip off the appropriate authorities about the impending financial implosion and also make a few well-placed sports bets that would take care of my student loans quite handily), I probably wouldn’t change too much.

I would definitely still go to Brown. I loved being able to chart the course of my own education – a mixture of English and American literature and science – with minimal interference. Plus, there is a genuine sense of community and curiosity on campus. Folks there had a deep and abiding passion for what they were doing, whether it was making ketchup, singing Gilbert & Sullivan, or building synthetic biological components. Going back for Commencement always feels like going home.

This isn’t to say that an Ivy League diploma is any guarantee of immediate financial success. Some of my classmates are living at home; others have penthouses. I think most will turn out pretty okay. One of the weirder things about life after college, for me, was seeing this diversion in the lives of my friends. We used to all live in the same dormitories and drink the same crappy beer; now some of us jet off to Europe while others chew their fingernails and hope that the rent check will clear. You start to drift off into different orbits.

If I did it all over, I’d still probably go to journalism school. While I don’t think a graduate degree is necessarily a prerequisite for gainful employment these days (compare my bank balance with that of my plumber or electrician), I think it was a solid starting point for the path I did want to take. My undergraduate experience in journalism was limited to drawing cartoons for the school newspaper. I saw graduate school as a methodical way to wean myself off of the academic writing style that I’d become a bit locked into.

Instead of going straight on into grad school, though, if I had a do-over I might find some way to do a gap year program that wouldn’t break the bank — teaching abroad, working on farms, that sort of thing.

Of course, that would then put Alternate Universe-Me contemplating higher education in 2009, in the midst of the most violent throes of our recent financial turmoil. So AU-Me definitely has a higher probability of moving back to California with my parents for a while, where from there I suppose any number of things could happen: I get my old job at Disneyland back and am perpetually disgruntled behind a fake smile. I tutor children for the SAT. I get too deep into the illegal ferret trade and have to flee the state. And so on.

That, of course, is the problem of time travel and wishful thinking. The hero can never go back and just fix one thing. It always leads to unintended complications and repercussions.

Still, there’s the debt. I think I made good, solid choices in my education, but the debt remains.

When I was unable to make payments, looking at the balance of my student loans felt like standing in front of a vast wave about to come crashing down on my head. Now it feels like an annoying yet manageable chronic illness. But oh, what a pill to swallow!

I don’t think I’m quite qualified to spout off about how we should fix education in this country — something along the lines of certain European countries where there’s vocational tracks for secondary school and free college tuition sounds nice. But I don’t think the average American really wants the system — or any of our systems — to change, he just wants things to go back to the way they used to be.

At least there’s one thing those of us twenty-somethings mired in student debt have going for us: They can take back your car or house, but your education can’t be repossessed. Though I’m sure Congress is working on it.

I’ve been relatively lucky.

I graduated from Brown University in 2008 with an English degree just before the economy went to pot. I went straight into journalism school for a science journalism program, and finished that up at the end of 2009. I actually interned at WBUR right after that, for the first half of 2010. That was an unpaid internship and I worked at a fish market in Cambridge so I could make rent. It was kind of tough. I generally ate one meal a day except for Saturdays, when my boss at the fish market would buy us all lunch and I’d be able to eat twice that day.

In May 2010, I moved to New York City to take a paid internship at a medical journal. After that, I found a full-time job as a legal reporter, and then this March I found a full-time science reporting job. I get a little anxious when I think about all my undergrad and graduate school debt — under six figures, but not by much — but my payments are manageable.

What I worry about most with my generation isn’t just the dollar difference in our lifetime earnings but our attitude toward work. When there’s such a culture of fear and uncertainty about the job market, people will put up with a lot of unfair work conditions to hang onto our job.

And with unions wasting away, the power is all in the hands of the employers.

Meanwhile, my parents have fared worse. My mom, a graphic designer, got fired by the educational publishing company she worked for along with several others. My dad, a software engineer, also lost his job. They both lost their health insurance and have had to pay for medical expenses out of pocket. My mom, at 61 years old, took vocational classes to become a home health aide. She takes care of elderly folks and occasionally does freelance work for the company that fired her.

That’s who I really think this recession is affecting. Twenty-somethings like me have our future ahead of us. I think age discrimination falls even harder on older working-class people.

I think a lot of journalism and trend pieces tend to over-focus on people like me — young, white, college-educated — and how hard it has become for us, when for a lot of folks — the poor, minorities, uneducated, older non-upper class Boomers — things are even worse. And for many of these groups, the “American Dream” wasn’t feasible for them before the recession.

Twenty-five. This number represents both my age and the pay cut, percentage-wise, that I took to move to my current job.

It was the right decision. I am doing the work that I like to do: writing about science, drawing silly pictures, and sometimes a combination of the two.

I should preface this all by saying I’m aware that I’m well-off compared to your archetypal Millenial. By the way, is there someone we can we talk to about changing this designation? It sounds like a disco musical on roller skates. I have never had to move in with my parents, my longest bout of unemployment was a month and a half over the summer before I started grad school, and I have health insurance.

But, yes, I share a lot of characteristics with the other members of the species Twentysomethingus privileged-post-collegiens: student debt in the upper five figures, unpaid and low-paid internships, and the promise from all kinds of pundits and economic analysts that I’ll never make as much money in my lifetime as the hypothetical version of me that graduated in 2000 instead of 2008.

I’m not sure what I expected to become at age 25, as my professional plans have always involved either art or writing. And whenever you decide to pursue these things, you will quickly be told by parents and teachers and friends that success is never assured and money is almost never forthcoming in these lines of work. And then you find out just how right all of that conventional wisdom is.

So you find your bliss where you can.

One of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had was working at the New Deal Fish Market on Cambridge Street in Cambridge. On paper, I suppose I was “overqualified” for this position. I don’t even want to call it “underemployment,” because it was good work. Gutting a fish and wrapping it in paper wasn’t exactly my minor in college, but there was a feeling of pleasure in providing something nourishing and tangible that is not quite as easy to capture while slinging pixels for The Man.

But I don’t want to undermine the whole concept of underemployment — to be the jerk 20-something telling my peers to just roll up their sleeves and keep a stiff upper lip. I was lucky in that my fish market job was something where I got to actually use my hands. Evisceration as soulcraft. Plus I was working for a small family business. This is not the usual day job, I think.

(I have seen the best minds of my generation bored hysterical by tweeting and breeding Excel spreadsheets out of consumer surveys.)

Anyway, back to “the cut” I first mentioned. A year ago, I was working as a legal reporter. I had a decent salary, employer-paid health insurance, and a tiny but steadily burgeoning 401(k). There were little granola bars in a cupboard at the office. I found out that the really nice thing about having a bit of money was not having to worry constantly about money. I was content.

But while I do enjoy legal reportage from the likes of NPR’s Nina Totenberg and Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, my heartstrings weren’t exactly thrumming while poking around in a 200-page filing in an insurance case that had dragged on for 18 years. Being immersed in the minutiae of the corporate legal system, even as an observer, was disheartening.

So when the chance came to take a position as a science reporter, I transplanted my 401(k) into an IRA, bade farewell to my co-workers and free granola bars, and packed off to the new office at the southern tip of Manhattan. Journalism isn’t exactly a cracker-jack career option right now, but I think in picking science reporting, I at least have one of the nicer, more lifeboat-adjacent seats on this foundering ship.

I don’t know everything, but I know enough to have an idea of what questions to ask. And I got over my fear of sounding stupid to an interviewee a long time ago.

At this point, the thing I have to keep doing is yanking my gaze away from the long view of whatever is my perceived “status” as a journalist or a cartoonist, and back to my actual writing or drawing. Because that’s the thing that matters.