There and back again: A student's tale

Strangely enough, unlike most stereotypical images of blogging, I have joined this project out of a sense of duty rather than a need for emotional ranting. To make myself sound more cool and mysterious, I am an untamed knight errant who fought for his freedom and then gave up his sword... but reluctantly was dragged back into the struggle-- or something pretentious like that. As a pretentious git, I should then introduce myself.

I, like not a few American students, have just yesterday discovered that my student lenders stopped issuing any more loans. I confirmed it over the phone with my broker-- they said that they could not help me any more and wish me the best of luck in finding another lender.

This in itself is not unusual. What is unusual is that I am studying in the United Kingdom, at the University of Edinburgh.*

Despite that I am currently $70,000+ in debt and only a year away from graduating (with top honours it would have been...), at this point I am facing having to drop out and return home with no degree, as I have no resources for aid here.

What does a person do in the USA these days, with only a high school diploma, a lifetime of debt, and a work history of dead-end jobs? I think (hope) we Yanks know the truth: it's better to never go to uni than to drop out: "I was getting 1st-class honours-- but I ran out of money so I couldn't finish". Very sexy at a job interview. Anyway, I may soon find out the hard way. I've not been home in a long time, so I can only say what filters across the pond-- and I'm pretty worried. From what I gather, there's no room for top-level economists and engineers, let alone people without any official value.

"Why don't you just stay in the UK?" Well, to be fair, I may have to... even though I'm not allowed to. If I don't have any money and drop out, I have to leave... but I don't have any money... to leave. yeah. I've actually already met a few people who've been rung out and hung to dry. Sudanese bioinformatics experts who work in security companies for two years on a working holiday, trying to get a job... and in the end don't even have enough money for a plane ticket home, so they have to overstay their visas. As someone who grew up in San Diego (more or less), I am terrified of this possibility in so many different ways.

I, like a smaller number of people, was shafted by FAFSA. I was financially-dependent and ineligible for any support but didn't get any family support like Führer Bush's family values-speeches proclaim-- until the age of 20. I was very, very tired of struggling for three years-- can't get a full-time job without a degree, but you can't afford to go to uni without a full-time job.

For over four years I've screamed with boiling fury, worse than any crazy Imam in Pakistan you hear about, about decadent Southern Californians bringing the end of the world-- how "everyone is in debt", how "no one has a real job" (i.e. anything outwith retail), how "you've got to be poor, black, a genius or have a loving family to make it"... and it's going to all fail-- and I knew I had to escape if I ever wanted to make it. So I did-- for a while. You say to yourself: "why didn't you go to uni in America and then leave?"

After being put $5,000+ in debt for medical-related instances, and paying about $200/mo for car insurance (being 20, male, and having one accident) I realised very quickly that my life was going down unless I did something drastic. I was uninsured, being at 3 part-time jobs working about 60 hours per week (which would randomly rotate and churn as I quit/was sacked from one due to "stress-related performance issues"-- gee, I wonder...) and still barely affording to live in sunny SoCal. In fact, only when my timetables clashed and I was simultaneously sacked from all three jobs, making me have a nervous breakdown and being taken in by a friend's family did I all at once get a dependency override and my income dipped low enough to render me any sort of aid. I'm not even sure if those income criteria matched living-cost inflation in the 1970's, let alone today). Of course, I also now had medical bills to take care of.

Political, socio-economic and even any simple Eurotrash-idealising views aside, I knew that I would do well somewhere else. My first year was extremely difficultlt, with almost no money and still trying to get a lender to even look at me seriously. I think I'm the first American to ever stay in a Scottish homeless hostel for a night. I'm very, very surprised I got a B and two C's for my courses that year.

The UK is an extremely liberal country-- that is, not as in left-wing, but more like libertarian. In fact, people in the UK and from just about every other country as well seem to say the UK is the country "closest to the USA"-- whatever you want to interpret that as. Most of them say it in anything but a positive light, though.

However, even as a foreigner here (and trust me, we are thoroughly treated like er... non-citizens by the system in many different aspects), I do not have to jump through hoops to go through health-insurance underwriting, to get quotes ranging from $50-500/mo depending on God's will. People say the NHS is shit, but it's free at cost of usage. People don't have heart attacks here and deal with it without calling an ambulance. People don't pull teeth out with pliers. I was in nearly the same situation. People say: "oh, but don't you wait 6 months to see a doctor?" Err, you see 6 months to see a dermatologist for acne. If you have a broken bone you wait about 6 hours... and that's a specialist. I've never had to wait more than 1 week to see a general practitioner (who really only seem useful for referring to a specialist or prescribing cure-alls like codeine [mmm]).

I don't have to submit myself to the fates for car insurance, batshit-insane Californian drivers, or rising petrol prices. The bus works. It just went up to £1.10 per trip. They generally come pretty often, and even when they don't, most people take the bus so the boss isn't really miffed if you're 5 minutes late as long as you phone.

I have held the same job for 3 years and am very successful at it-- as shit as the job is. Even with the load**, I have managed to improve my grades dramatically. I was a happy, healthy person. I don't even need health insurance any more if I really didn't want it.

But this wasn't without cost-- the UK is still one of the most expensive countries in the world. The UK is currently suffering the same bug as America-- a housing bubble saddled with a credit crisis-- and guess what? now domino-style foreclosures-- but layered on top is a currency that is stupidly strong. If you think an Amsterdam holiday is expensive as an American, live here and a weekend in Amsterdam feels like partying in Mexico-- only with architecture, drugs and really hot chicks of course, dudemanbro. And actually, the quality of life here is pretty fucking shit considering what it costs. I make more working a shit job here than I would being a doctor in Poland-- but in Poland, at least the houses are made to handle the seasons, the medical service is better, the trains run (relatively) on-time, the crime is lower, you get four real seasons instead of "wet" and "wetter", the food isn't picked early, freeze-dried and shipped all the way from New Zealand because it costs less than the stuff grown next door. And of course everyone knows that Polish women are the shit, and British women are, well...

Ultimately though, I've really only traded individually-weighted costs of speculative insurance underwriting with regularised, societally-weighted costs. Everyone goes through the same tax-bracketing system-- and it makes for a very stable lifestyle. You can plan. You can save. I never knew what "budgeting" was until I came to the UK: The idea that you can actually predict how much a single year will cost is something I still can't really believe is true-- I must have been dreaming. I could've easily been $70,000+ in debt for studying in America, but instead I knew I would have an okay life here for the same price.

I thought I could forget about these past troubles-- but they've come back. I now must face the realities of what will happen to me in 4 months' time-- when the tuition bill comes-- and I may not be able to finish the investment I made. It will probably be my ruin. I might have been able to prove my usefulness to the UK gov't over the course of a maximum of a ridiculous 15 years of a multitude of "temporary" migration/work-permit/skills programmes bullshit... if I'd got a degree.

Apparently I've never escaped the Californian lifestyle. Those big houses, those quadruple mortgages... the fact that the retail sector makes the majority of the US economy. The most dangerous bubble was one I couldn't get away from-- student loans. I'd have a mortgage and a degree over a house and no degree any day-- is a degree not the safest investment in terms of profit? I suppose that's not true anymore. I'll have to pay back my debts, whether or not I got the degree or even if I can pay them back. I'll be honest and say that suicide has crossed my mind more than once as a possible exit route -- and I'm not even in that actual situation yet. I can't imagine what people who are already out of the frying pan and into the fire think about.

At this point I have no idea what lender would ever touch an American living overseas, with no cosigner and $30,000+ of credit-based unsecured debt but only four years of credit history in these times -- as even three years ago, of all the dozens of lenders I tried, all required a cosigner at the very least. I know that come August, my 750 FICO will mean jack shit. I'm not even sure if an 850 FICO would work, considering "debt-to-income" ratio.***

I can't even transfer to an American uni because a) I don't have ANY general ed courses (they're done in school here, not at uni) and b) the grading system is so different that if I transfer now, my grades look lackluster at best-- but if I could finish this year and next year with A's, I would in translation have a 4.0+ degree with distinction.

it gets a bit old when you write in your undergraduate letter of motivation basically: "I don't have good marks because I have to work", and you find that now you'd be writing in your (post)graduate letter: "I don't have good marks because I have to work". Eventually people stop caring. No wonder I never got a scholarship. Whoever came up with this "A for effort" idea should be shot to destroy their schizophrenic delusions.




To shorten this long, blathering introduction, I've come to this blog for my craziness and trying to escape, and now that I realised I really can't ever escape, I may as well transmit signals of reason and contemplation until the ship is saved, or sinks to the bottom.

The nice thing about the UK is you meet people from all walks of life and the world suddenly seems very... diverse once again. Hopefully my pretentious worldly European wisdom can be of benefit to this blog. At the very least, I get the BBC and British comedy is way better than American.

Gladly ask me any and all sorts of questions about life as an expatriate, an international student, an American abroad, a US student, an independent student, intercultural relations, comparative politics/economics, which country has the best beer; I am your fount of knowledge. Drink your fill, bitches.



*Please excuse any extra u's or inverted word-final er's-- I've been here long enough that I can't be bothered to keep up my proficiency in proper American. The upside is that it apparently increases my IQ by 10 points and I imagine when I go back to the States I can get as much American fanny as I want.
**British uni is VERY time-intensive. Don't think that they gave you one book to read per week for shits and giggles. If we numerous foreign cash cows pay this much for uni, and there are so few lectures per week, why are lecturers paid shit?
***I've always found it brilliant how student loans are tied to your income: that's really, really beneficial to students-- that in order to get a loan for studies, they have to work during their studies and fuck up their GPA. How does one work full-time and write a 15,000 word dissertation on theoretical linguistics at the same time that they have four courses to attend? by failing at them. that's a great way to make someone successful enough to be able to pay back their $1,000/mo. burden.