I finally paid off my Michigan student loans late last week. It still hasn’t really sunk in yet. Paying off the small fortune that it took for me to go to grad school always seemed like such a far away dream. I’m relieved to no longer have a huge debt hanging over me but I have to admit, there is a tiny part of me that keeps thinking, “WHAT IF SOME MAJOR EMERGENCY OCCURS AND I NEED ALL THAT MONEY BACK?!?” I suppose that’s now incentive to continue to save. :)
As expensive as Michigan* was and as annoying as it was to make small and large payments** on my loans and still feel like I wasn’t going anywhere with them, I don’t regret going to school there and still think it was totally worth it. Grad school changed my life in a lot of ways and I’ll always look fondly on those two years. Michigan gave me a new career, a new life in California, and multiple interview opportunities over the past few years through my Michigan friends & contacts. Michigan introduced me to some amazing people, many of whom I still keep in touch with and consider friends for life. Most importantly, Michigan gave me a way out of a small town I hated and helped me realize so many of my childhood dreams. Go Blue!
* I should note that I was lucky in that I received funding through scholarships & assistantships three out of my four semesters at Michigan but I STILL had to take out a lot of loans for housing, books, & that totally unfunded last semester.
** If you’re wondering how I did it, it took making a lot of extra payments over the past five years. I started off with both a small private loan (due to that expensive last semester) and a large consolidated federal loan. The private loan (Sallie Mae I think) had a pretty high interest rate so it was my top priority when I first got out of grad school to pay that off first (I think I did that that first year out of school). The large federal loan took a long time to work through. Every time I got a little extra money (bonuses, tax refunds), I tried to put part of that money towards my loan. It finally got to the point where the remaining balance of the loan was low enough for me to bite the bullet and pay if off with my savings.
Funny, I had lunch with Diana on Friday and we were discussing the exact same thing re: the value of SI. Maybe it was just the choice-supportive bias talking, but we both thought it was worth it, looking back 5 years later. Neither of us would be where we are without it.
Over the past few years, I’ve received random unsolicited emails from folks trying to get a job in user experience and my response is always, “go to grad school.” They never seem to like that answer (“I’ve been reading Jakob Nielsen, isn’t that enough?”) though, which I find both entertaining & annoying.