My Year in Scholastic Indentured Servitude
Work-study was my way to a college education. But was spending time on a useless, low-paid job really worth it?
Ask someone about the worst job they ever had and you’re likely in for a story. A babysitting gig from hell. A Steinbeck-esque tale about toiling in a fish-canning factory. Workplace bullying. Sexual harassment. Safety violations. Unreasonable demands. Unpaid overtime.
I’ve had some bad jobs, but to be honest, I’m not even sure my worst job qualifies as a job since I didn’t get paid. In the most generous terms, I bartered my time for passage into higher education. In the harshest terms, you might call it indentured servitude.
College was sold to millennials as a necessity — the operative word here is “sold.” Hundreds of thousands of us are carrying the cost of this successful PR campaign. Compared to many of my peers, I don’t have a huge amount of student debt, but it’s enough so that every time I see the words “student loan forgiveness” in the news, I get a pleasurable tingle down my spine.
Whether we’ll ever see any relief remains a mystery, but the internet loves to debate the topic. Someone will inevitably jump into the comments section with, “I paid off my loans, so why should other people get a break?”…
