Student loans

I remember when I decided I wanted to go to New York University. I applied early decision and had numerous other college applications sitting in a neat pile in my room; none of them were of any interest to me.

It was a Thursday sometime in November and I arrived home to an empty house and opened the mailbox to a large envelope. I walked down the long hill to my front door as the sun set in the distance. I remember thinking clearly how extremely cruel it would be for them to send a rejection letter in such a large envelope.

My heart was up in my throat as I tore through the packet roughly. While maybe I should have, I didn’t read anything but the “Congratulations” on the top of the first page before dropping the acceptance folder and leaping in the air.

It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

In the folder was the financial aid information for the first year on which all of the following years would be based. It was expensive to say the least, but I didn’t care.

During my four years at NYU, I saw the vast sum of money left to me by my great-grandmother dwindle down to zero. When it was gone, my parents helped with the following semesters.

It was exciting living in New York (on Fifth Avenue my freshman year) and I was attending one of the most prestigious film programs in the country, having the time of my life. I found the city to be a living and breathing organism full of doors to open and step through.

And like a blur, it was a diploma that was received in the mailbox on top of the hill and me, now living in Brooklyn, hearing about it over the phone.

And then almost immediately the student loans came calling. There weren’t that many of them and they were small. A couple thousand dollars a semester, but when consolidated together (seven semesters), all of a sudden we’re talking about a substantial amount of money.

I looked at it in a positive way. It was a challenge to pay them off. I’m not the most organized person in the world?and have often been late paying my cell phone bill (not for lack of funds as much as a bad memory), but I decided I was going to do this right. I decided to make payments larger than the ones they asked for, decided to make them on time and not think about it much more than that.

They send you a little coupon book for the year and you tear out one page per month and send it in with your check. I sent the last one in mid January and by last week they had sent me a new book-one down, 14 more to go. Fifteen years to pay it off in total.

I was completely disheartened when I looked at the new book and realized that the principal balance had only gone down $500. I had paid them $1,500.

I literally couldn’t believe this to be correct and spent an hour on the phone trying to get a better handle on how this worked. I needed to understand and stayed on the phone until they transferred me to someone who could explain it (you’d be surprised how long that takes).

It wasn’t a mistake. The interest compounds daily and each payment first goes toward interest and then the principal balance. It’s just the way these things work and paying more than I had to did make a difference.

I thanked the woman for being patient, hung up the phone and suddenly the $160,000 price tag that came with my education felt like real money.

I was angry because I wouldn’t have taken out the small loans in the first place had all of this been explained to me. It was only because it was on the packet from NYU (right under the scholarship they were giving me). I did a bit of research and found that some colleges get a kickback on the interest paid to them by the student loan companies for putting it in their financial aid packets. I found no direct evidence of NYU and my student loan company, but it seems likely that they did receive some of the $1,000 that I paid to interest last year.

My phone rings again and it’s a girl from NYU. She asks me if, as an alum, I would consider making a donation to the school.

“You have terrible timing,” I told her.

“Would evenings be better?” she asks.

“My student loans will be paid off in 15 years, try me then.”

She laughs.

“I’m not kidding.” I say and hang up.

- Zachary Stuart-Pontier