Okay, so this is my first official dkos diary, and I wish it could be about something more optimistic, but even with Obama just weeks from taking over, the outlook for me is still very grim. Like many others, I find myself in a state of financial crisis. However, I feel like my specific state of crisis is one that has not been properly addressed by anyone, and this diary is both a warning and a call for advice.
Nine years ago, after getting my Business/Economics BA from UCLA, and realizing that the corporate world was absolutely not for me, I decided to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a filmmaker. Having been rejected from the UCLA and USC film programs twice, I made a pact with myself that I would give it one last shot. I would put my heart and soul into it this time, and if I didn't get in, I was ready to accept my fate and work towards getting a CPA.
Like many of my classmates, I was overjoyed when I finally received an acceptance letter from USC's graduate film program. I distinctly remember being told on our first orientation day that we were "the future Spielbergs and Lucases of America". That mythology that had grown around USC's film program had been turned into a selling point. It was the kind of pep talk that was designed to keep people from dropping out after the first semester, something that a lot of students were tempted to do after finding out exactly how expensive this school was going to be, and how little the school did to help its student out financially.
I remember how competitive it was to score one of the handful of TA-ships the film school offered. I managed to get a TA-ship with one of the most prestigious cinematography professors at the school. It paid for NO UNITS and just a minimum hourly wage. But what did I care? I was one of the future Spielbergs. If I would end up merely a fraction as successful as Spielberg, my student loans would be irrelevant.
I guess it's obvious to see where this is going. Six years after graduating, I am still in roughly the same amount of debt I was in when I graduated. With my private and federal student loans combined, I've got a whopping $140,000 to pay off. My $20,000 credit card debt seems trivial by comparison.
The reason I'm posting this is because I recently heard a commentator on the radio talk about how disgraceful it was for banks to give home loans to people without making sure those people could afford those loans. Yet nobody talks about student loans being given to film or art students whose financial prospects are not the same as those going to law school or med school. Furthermore, there are far fewer protections for student loans, since they are the only debt (as far as I know) for which one can't declare bankruptcy.
As it stands, even with a yearly income over $50,000, I barely manage to pay more than the interest on these loans. Life in LA is expensive, and with the number of hours I have to work, the time spent on the freeways, and the financial stress, it makes it impossible to be creatively inspired. I'm stuck in a corporate job, exactly what I wanted to avoid by going to film school. I'd really like to move out of LA and go somewhere I can try to get some perspective on my life, but it seems practically impossible to do so when anchored down by this kind of debt. I'm not even able to deduct all the interest I pay from my taxes, since those deductions are capped by the IRS at a fraction of what I actually have to pay.
My situation really hit a critical point when I was t-boned by a car that ran a red light at high speed, completely demolishing my car and leaving me with disc bulges in my neck and frequent anxiety attacks. It took that kind of a jolt for me to finally realize how dire my situation had become. The thing is, I know I'm not the only one in this situation. Sure, I have some classmates who can't relate to my situation because their tuition was paid for by relatives or because they had already made a career for themselves in some other field. But I don't know of a single classmate with my kind of debt who has managed to make any significant progress on their student loans since graduating.
So this diary is being posted in the hopes that someone out here has discovered some solutions, that it will make others aware of this problem, and that it will give other prospective film students some pause before choosing to swallow the hype being peddled by some schools out there.