Why words matter

You’re applying for a job. You’ve requested recommendation letters from three professionals who know you, your work ethic, your work. What three adjectives would you hope to see in such letters?  Affectionate, nurturing, and agreeable? How about confident, outspoken, and intellectual?

Personally, I would be very upset if anyone wrote about me using the former series of terms. This (unfortunately) gendered language, deployed in a well-meaning recommendation letter, can actually hurt a woman’s chances of landing an interview or getting hired. When I saw this article on a friend’s Facebook page, I commented that I would be disappointed if I discovered that anyone had ever used the term “nurturing” to describe me as a teacher. From my perspective, nurturing and teaching are two different things. Parents nurture; teachers teach. 

Gendered language difficulties aside, the term “nurturing” suggests anything from coddling and babying to a positive, hand-holding, and holistic approach to a relationship or situation. Nurturing is for parents, brothers and sisters, close friends, and those types of personal, intimate relationships rather than the student-teacher dynamic that should be entirely focused on the work of the class.  Being nurturing can be misinterpreted and potentially perceived as inappropriate in an educational setting.

While I agree that a certain degree of nurturing and affection may be necessary and even valuable in kindergarten or fourth grade, I don’t see a place for nurturing (as I’ve described it) in the college classroom. In fact, I will even go a step further and boldly suggest that any tendency toward nurturing at the post-secondary level contributes to the accountability problem that we continually see when students are told all their lives that every effort they make is good enough. 

Here’s a news flash: Sometimes those efforts aren’t good enough. Sometimes you must do better. This is a cornerstone of my teaching persona and my approach to business. Perhaps it is because of my business and journalism background that I have a colder and more abrupt attitude about achievement, but I enjoy challenging my students, getting them to see their writing and their abilities differently, pushing them outside their comfort zones. The goal is success, but not by making my students feel good about themselves. I want them to question what they think they know and come up with answers – this is hard work. Challenging and pushing are the hallmarks of any productive college classroom – we all want to challenge and push our students. And here is where I seem to diverge from some of my fellow teachers: I truly believe that challenging and nurturing are two different objectives. You cannot challenge a student and nurture them at the same time. 

Some of my colleagues disagree and see “nurturing” as a valuable characteristic in a teacher. Perhaps it is simply a matter of definitional difference – those who see nurturing, affection, and agreeableness (for instance) as beneficial to learning versus seeing it as detrimental.  Nurturing connoted as caring, encouraging, supportive, rather than my more negative interpretation. Once our students graduate, they will navigate a world that is distinctly unforgiving and demanding, a world expecting a high performance level with little room to screw up. This is the world that I try to expose my students to, even in a small way, even by just saying, “This isn’t a story.  You can do so much better.” That’s not very nurturing in my book, but it IS honest and oddly inspirational. 

When I asked one former student if she ever thought of me as “nurturing,” she laughed and said, “No!” To which the others standing around tittered nervously, but she continued on, clarifying that when I told her during the course of Advanced Comp that what she had written was terrible and not achieving the objectives of the assignment, she said she knew she had to make it better. She knew she could do better. I wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t already sense, but my saying it so bluntly made it real and immediate, spurring her on to action. She knows that I care – about her success – but not about her holistic being and overall human experience. That student worked very hard to reach that high bar I’d set and ended up getting her creative nonfiction story accepted and published by a literary journal. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.

There is nothing wrong with breaking students’ complacency and expectation that everything they write is golden. Criticism abounds in the world beyond our safe walls. I tell my students all the time that I am the safety net. I will push them in ways they’ve never been pushed and they may fail, but I will give them the chance to try again and succeed. This doesn’t happen in other environments. Once you are hired to do a job, you are expected to get it right…all the time. No safety net, just judgment. 

A little taste of that judgment in a safe and encouraging (not nurturing) academic environment strengthens students and gives them a glimpse of the world they plan to inhabit in one, two, three years. A colleague suggested that students do need to be nurtured because if faced with this kind of criticism and honesty, they would crumble. My response was to ask what is going to happen then, in a few years’ time, when that student leaves academia and faces even harsher criticism with greater consequences than disappointing a respected teacher or getting a bad grade? 

I welcome your perspective, whether you teach or not. Should all teachers (whether male or female) be “nurturing,” “agreeable,” “affectionate,” and should these be welcomed and celebrated characteristics for women in any field (academic or otherwise)? Why do we think of characteristics such as independence, assertiveness, and confidence as “male” when many women naturally possess these and always have (I include myself here)? These characteristics are just good qualities – person qualities, not “male” or “female” qualities. But in terms of recommendation letters, if the general assumption will be that the gendered “female” terms will be detrimental, should we take it upon ourselves to ask our recommenders NOT to use such terms in the first place, even though that clearly indicates our assent to the negative assessment of these “female” terms?

Words matter. Regardless of how you answer my questions, be aware when writing a letter of recommendation or when describing a female colleague that the words you use have consequences.

Solving life's little mysteries

My life has always had a mystery at its foundation. And a giant clue came into my possession this summer that may be the key to unlocking the answer to one question I've never really felt compelled to honestly verbalize for the lump in my throat: Who is my birth mother?

I've known I was adopted since before I could comprehend words. This is because my parents started telling me at about the same time they started reading to me. And I'm fairly certain that they started reading to me as soon as they adopted me at four months old.

By the time I started grade school, I understood what being adopted meant and in the 1970s, it meant that you didn't talk about having been adopted, such was the social stigma. Fortunately, we have come a long way, baby, and that particular stigma has turned into a badge of honor - I was adopted; ie, my parents definitely WANTED me. No doubt there. We live in a world of open adoptions now, but in 1970, mine was closed. Sometime in the 1980s, the PA courts planned to close all adoption records and make obtaining valuable information such as birth parent names very difficult. Anticipating that someday, I might ask this question, my parents wrote to the courts and got my original birth certificate, which they did not look at. Rather, they handed the envelope to my uncle, who apparently looked at my birth mother's name and said, "It's really close," meaning, it was really close somehow to our family name of Lynch.

Then my uncle placed all of the documents in an envelope pre-addressed by my dad with our home address, and mailed it home. My parents placed that sealed envelope in their bank's safe deposit box and started telling me about it in my 20s. I declined obtaining the envelope, reasoning that the woman cared enough about me to give me up instead of being a 20-year-old single mom who would struggle to raise an infant with the help of her parents. She probably didn't need to hear from the girl she gave up all those years ago. She had me, named me (I also know my full original name - it is nothing like my name, the one that you all know me by), and gave me up to the state. While I was installed with a foster mother and before my parents were alerted to my presence, I've been told that she bought me things and sent them to the foster home. I have also been told that she was probably in the court room a year later, the day the judge made my adoption official.

I have never wanted to find her - out of respect. Respect for what must have been a very difficult decision. Respect for her privacy. I don't want to bring this woman pain by showing up one day and surprising her. But now that my parents have given me the envelope and I have opened it and viewed the name of the woman who gave me life, I find myself compelled to know the rest of the story.

I am a story person, you see. I like the details. And there are details about me and my past that I would like to know. This is my chance to complete the missing pieces of my story. So I leapt and registered with an online adoption registry and have contacted a nonprofit adoption agency that conducts searches in Pittsburgh.

I don't know how this story will end. Finding a birth parent is an emotional journey that can be laced with disappointment - she may have passed away, she may refuse to speak with me, she may not be found at all. That's the negative side. The positive side might be meeting and talking and learning about the woman and her story - the practical (medical stuff) and the real (how exactly did I come to be?)

Throughout my entire existence, I've wondered if I look like her. If she is creative and outgoing like me. If she is stubborn and just a bit arrogant, but very generous - all qualities of mine. I wonder if she ever married. If I have half-brothers or half-sisters somewhere. If she likes cats or dogs. Travel. Photography. Intellectual challenges.

So many questions. And today begins a new chapter: the search. I am ready, more than I have been before, whatever the outcome.

SRI: Silly Revolting Indigestion? Spoiled Repugnant Insanity?

No.

Student Rating of Instruction. Spring Edition. 2012. Now coming to a university department near you. Watch as adjuncts, instructors, and tenure-track faculty squirm on theoretical stakes as students skewer them for various reasons real or imagined. Witness as administrators and supervisors carefully consider what students have to say as they weigh the professional fates of us feckless folk and determine whether, based on what students have to say, we should be reappointed for another year.

Have I dripped enough sarcasm into my introduction to sufficiently convey how horrifying these little written barbs are? The SRI…the bane of my (and fellow instructor and tenure-track faculty’s) existence. Why? Because our department heads, deans, and provosts actually take into consideration the OPINIONS of 18-20 year olds in determining our overall effectiveness, knowledge, and clarity as professors.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually value student input. I actively request it every semester in every class that I teach – but I expect my students to provide substantive feedback about what they learned, what they would change about the class, and an explanation or argument as to WHY something should change. I’ve used this valuable feedback to make changes…every semester. So why, might you ask, am I being so hard on the SRI? Simple. It is ANONYMOUS. Which makes it the equivalent of Rate My Professors where there are zero consequences for lambasting a professor because the student decides that it is the professor’s fault that he or she didn’t do well – that the professor wasn’t clear, knowledgeable, and available…not that the student wasn’t prepared, procrastinated all semester, didn’t listen or pay attention in class, and never asked a single question. In other words, the SRI encourages vengeance and utterly lacks any accountability.

SRIs are used to evaluate our overall performance as instructors by people who do not yet have college degrees, who do not have the knowledge that we do about writing, college level instruction, or rhetoric, who think (generally) that Facebook and Twitter are as worthy of their attention as their college coursework (even IN class), and who skip class because it is raining…or snowing…or windy…or sunny…or or or or or….and think that those are viable excuses for missing class. These SRIs make me distinctly uncomfortable and on edge every semester…and I know that I’m not alone in that feeling. The power that the students have over us is monumental and scary – they can literally make or break our careers, depending on how heavily weighted the department or university tenure committee decide to make the SRI.

I cannot force my students to listen. I cannot force my students to grant me more attention in class than they grant their texts and emails on their phones. I cannot force my students to begin assignments early, work diligently on them, and turn them in on time. But they can force my department head to note that I’m not clear enough, or give assignments that are too hard or weighted too heavily, or that I don’t turn graded work back fast enough. On this last one, I admit to taking up to two weeks to grade and return work, which I always figured was ample time, given all of the other responsibilities that I must attend to. If ALL I did was teach and grade, then the work would likely be returned within two class periods. But that’s not the reality of my job or my life. Sometimes I don’t work on weekends. And sometimes I don’t work until 10pm. So what do I do? Ignore my other responsibilities in favor of fast grading? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

These SRIs are the equivalent of your interns evaluating YOUR overall effectiveness as a boss and influencing your continued employment…can you imagine? Most people who work outside of academia who learn this (when I tell them) are floored and disgusted by this idea. Indeed. As are we.

But.

As students are now considered “consumers” of education and we are evidently cogs in the education delivery business, my job is to give the consumers what they want…easy, simple, and numerous assignments that spread the overall grade weights widely so that no one assignment carries a heavier load, a low amount of reading and writing, and an easy path to an A. Or at least that’s how these SRIs make me feel…they devalue what I do by allowing individuals who are distinctly unqualified to comment on my performance and to judge my effectiveness based solely on opinion and whether they like me or not.

You’d think that I have terrible SRIs, right? I don’t. My evals are usually pretty good, but if I try anything different, anything truly innovative, anything that goes outside the expected norm? I suffer with poor SRI ratings.

This contentious document makes it IMPOSSIBLE for me to bring my creativity, innovation, new ideas, and adventurous spirit to the crafting of composition classes. Why is that important, you might wonder? Well, being creative and innovative in a composition class actually helps the students who are paying attention and doing the work a whole lot more than a traditional, standard, expected, taught-from-a-textbook approach that gives purposeless, audience-less five-paragraph essay assignments. But that’s a gripe for another day.

If you are a professor or instructor in a similar position, how do you work to guarantee good student responses to the SRI (“excellent” and “good” ratings)? Do you explain things every single day (redundancies atop redundancies)? Do you give quizzes on what you explained? Do you provide pizza and cookies once a month? Do you start everyone at an A and give them ten assignments worth 10% each and make it almost impossible for them to fail or do poorly regardless of their level of engagement?

Any advice or ideas will be greatly appreciated, both for me and anyone who suffers the same heartburn every semester. Let the games begin.

Edit: This article just arrived in my university mailbox, forwarded by a fellow faculty member to all faculty. Given the content of my post, this is highly relevant. Note especially the VAST differences in the definition of an "effective teacher" between students and faculty.

Defending my salary: An easy target writes back

Imagine being the constant target of derision from the general public, disconnected people in authority positions, legislators, and your own customers. Imagine that your interns’ opinions count more than your supervisor’s in your annual evaluation. Imagine fielding emails filled with questions, concerns, and requests from customers, colleagues, and supervisors at 10:00pm on a Thursday night, 8:00am on a Saturday morning, and 2:00pm on a Sunday afternoon. Imagine the salary that would be attached to that job. Now think again.

As an easy target for everyone’s misconceptions and assumptions about what university professors do, as exemplified by David Levy’s recent missive in the Washington Post declaring that we don’t work hard enough (I evidently make six figures and work 30 hours a week – news to me, by the way), I decided to write back in another attempt to restore balance to this narrative battle that we faculty seem to be losing.

While our critics such as Levy and anyone who knows nothing about what we do, but who seem to embrace an ingrained fantasy as reality, would never agree to Jill Kronstadt’s call to “shadow a community college professor. Or come work as an adjunct,” perhaps the more rationally-minded amongst blogosphere readers will consider a typical day during spring semester in an effort to fill in the gaps.

Specifically, this was my Wednesday, March 28, 2012.

As a second-year, tenure-track Pennsylvania state school faculty member, my salary is $51,000 a year. I have been at Kutztown University since August 2010, and my salary has stagnated because we don’t have a contract.

8:00 – 8:30am – Respond to 11 student emails that arrived the night before. Gulp down coffee and banana for breakfast. Pet the cat.

8:30 – 8:45am – Get dressed. Confirm 10am meeting with Social Equity office.

9:00 – 9:45am – Arrive at school, visit English Department main office, sign three forms as the Temporary Hiring Committee Chair, discuss personnel matter with English Department chair in closed-door impromptu meeting, open newly arrived dossier materials for Department secretary to add to applicants’ files.

10:00 – 10:50am – (Notice I haven’t taught anyone anything yet?) Meeting with Social Equity office to discuss proper procedures for interviewing candidates, reasons for inviting applicants to campus, the specific language to avoid, as well as the order in which everything must happen. Take notes and ask questions as April 1 we begin reviewing applications for Linguistics temporary instructor.

11:00am – Arrive University Writing Center. As the director of the Center, my presence facilitates a more professional atmosphere, even though it is difficult to get work done because I do not have an office with a door. I actually sit in the waiting area of the Writing Center and work on my Netbook while tutoring and discussions are ongoing all day.

1:00 – 2:30pm – Students from Advanced Composition and College Composition classes meet with me to discuss progress on current projects. Several ask me to read their essays and provide feedback, which I do. One College Comp student realizes she is completely off-base and we discuss how to get her back on track. I offer to grant her a one-week extension to improve her chances at success.

2:30 – 3:00pm – Student who had previously asked me to be her advisor explains the latest problems/drama and that she was denied a change in advisor. I help her to understand the wisdom of the Department Chair’s decision and encourage her to focus her work and not let the drama get her down.

 3:00 – 3:30pm – Respond to students, Social Equity, colleagues, and my Department Chair via email as questions and requests are continuous.

3:30 – 3:45pm – Return to English office across campus, review incomplete applications for Linguistics position, ask Department secretary to compose reminder emails to applicants that their materials are incomplete.

4:00 – 4:30pm – Difficult conversation with student worker about reappointment.

4:30pm – Drive home.

5:00 – 10:00pm – Complete various me-tasks such as laundry, cleaning kitchen, enjoying two personal phone calls, and eating dinner, while intermittently responding to student emails, reading and commenting on student blogs, crafting a proposal to present at a national conference in 2013, emailing colleagues to drum up interest, writing a letter of recommendation for another student, and then creating Google doc for new panel.

10:30pm – Go to bed.

That’s a typical Wednesday. And Monday. In fact, today was close to this detailed description with the addition of a phone interview. My Social Equity meeting this morning consisted of certifying candidates that the committee would like to interview. And tonight I need to work on my presentation for a national conference in Boston this Saturday instead of crafting a panel for a conference next year.

 I teach three classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Notice how much research I completed? Notice how much grading I did? Notice how different this day is from your conception of what professors do? The requirements of my job are to teach, research, publish, present at national conferences, serve on committees (department, college, and university level), do community service, and (for me right now) run the University Writing Center. Much of the research, administrative work, and community service take place on weekends, over breaks, and during the summer.

If only my job just consisted of teaching. What a dream.

I take home $2600 net a month. Now tell me I make too much and I don’t work hard enough.

"They're working on it"

Last year, I decided to take the plunge into real estate for the first time in my life. At 41, it's about time, right? Well, until I turned 40, I actually wasn't a fan of purchased real estate and thought it to be a waste of time and money. I didn't want to be tied down. I wanted money available to travel. Equity? For what? To be able to borrow more money? Yeah, that sounds like a GREAT idea. :/ Maintenance? Expensive and time-consuming. The ability to plant flowers, trees, and paint the walls the colors you want? Phht. Who cares? I have original art and photos on my walls and I live in a nicely landscaped apartment complex that someone else mows, plants, and maintains.

So went my thinking for 23 years. I moved out of my parents' house at 18 and never looked back. But something started to change when I landed my faculty position...and then made a few friends...and then met my boyfriend. Suddenly, my impulse is not to wander and move, but to settle down (perish the thought! shudders my younger self). Further, the lack of a contract, any raise in salary, and increasing expenses caused me to seriously consider buying a property that could do double-duty - my first home AND an investment property with a tenant. So last summer, I started looking.

Just looking at first. In the fall, I visited a few places for educational purposes - just to see what was out there, how much things cost, and what it would take to make this move. Then I started crunching numbers, watching my mutual fund slowly leak money as the free market free-fell, and slowly the picture cleared and one stark reality came into focus: If I could find the right place, I may be able to increase my income by a modest amount while also becoming a homeowner with all of the attendant tax advantages, thus saving money on two fronts. By December of 2011, I had done my research, decided to liquidate almost all of my remaining meager investment accounts (including most of my paltry IRA) in order to make the ultimate financial leap. My goal was to buy a property with a positive cash flow (if fully rented) AND a mortgage payment equivalent to my current rent payment so that I would firmly be living within my financial means (and better, with a decent rental payment coming to me each month).

During the second week of January this year, my real estate agent sent me a listing that I initially ignored because it was listed $18,500 higher than my anticipated high price point. And then, Jim (my boyfriend) and I met up with my agent to look at properties one weekend and I decided on the spur of the moment to add this particular property into the mix. Just because. My mortgage guy had just announced that I was pre-approved for $50k more than I wanted to spend, which gave me room to increase my high price point just a bit, but still be within range of my target monthly mortgage payment. The duplex was in a nice neighborhood, looked good in the photos, and seemed to be mechanically solid.

The first walkthrough sold me. Jim and I scoured this place with our eyes - his much more expert view allowing me to see value where before I'd seen a wall or a wire or a pipe - the seller attended our walkthrough and answered questions about history, work that had been done, changes that had been made on his watch. Two days later, I bid at my high price point ($15k less than asking price, but well within the acceptable low end range of offers that today's market expects).

Within two hours of making my offer, my agent called to advise that two more bids were coming in to the listing agent. I upped my price $15k to within $3,500 of the asking price. Much trepidation and negotiation ensued, but the seller accepted my bid and we started hammering out the details. The seller signed the agreement of sale and cashed my earnest money check the first week of February.

And then the seller died the second week of February.

Having a deceased seller in the middle of a real estate deal is highly unusual and from that moment on, this deal has gotten more complicated and difficult at every turn. I might drop over in a faint if my real estate agent or mortgage guy ever calls me with good news before this is all over and settled.

Fast forward to today. My real estate agent just called to say of the listing agent and seller's estate, "They're working on it." "It" being the final two pieces of paperwork that must be signed by the one tenant in the unit that I will occupy guaranteeing her move-out by May 30 and the other an FHA Addendum that confirms I've completed the necessary FHA-requested work (that was finished two weeks ago). I am set to close at 11 a.m. on March 30. All they have to do is sign and get the tenant to sign the move-out agreement. They've known this since last Thursday. And have done jack-squat. I have been hearing "they're working on it" since last Thursday and I've lost faith that anyone involved in this deal is actually "working" on anything other than obstruction.

For the life of me, I can't fathom why the deceased seller's sisters are stalling - with a signed agreement of sale and cashed deposit, they are legally obligated to fulfill this deal. I've gotten screwed with the tenant, but I'll squeeze my finances and possibly borrow some money in order to financially make it until July. I also now have a call into the real estate attorney who gave me very good advice after the seller died. My mortgage guy tells me that this paperwork must be completed by week's end or my mortgage might not clear and close in time to settle on March 30. I've told my agent that we must finish this by Friday or we're waiting another 30 days to close*.

* Why close on the 30th of the month, you may ask? What's the big deal? Well, it IS a big deal. Once I close on this property, I will be paying my rent until July because I can't get out of my lease. I will also be paying the mortgage. Both of these payments are about the same amount. The rent from my second floor tenant (in my new property) covers 2/3 of the mortgage, but I have to come up with an extra $300 a month out of thin air just for the mortgage payment. Fun. Here's why closing on the 30th of a month will help - when you close on the 30th of the month, you don't pay that immediate month's mortgage - you get a 30 day grace period. So, if I close on March 30, I don't start paying the mortgage until May 1. See the benefit?

Now, had the first floor tenant (the one occupying the unit I will move into) not demanded a free month's rent in exchange for moving out early (ironic, because she told me she WANTED to move out early...until she suddenly sensed she could screw someone over...), then I would have TWO months of rent from BOTH places in the bank, creating a much more comfortable cushion to pay the mortgage, water bill, pest control, etc. But as she DID extort this from me so that my underwriter would be happy, I will now be skittering on the edge for the next several months.

People keep reassuring me that it will all be worth it. I keep hearing that buying property isn't usually this ugly/messy/ridiculous/frustrating. Forgive my doubt. I have likened this experience to a chess game, poker, and a horror movie. If things work out, perhaps I will look back on this and laugh (as Jim predicts). But right now, I can tell you two things for certain:

1. I'm sick of hearing "they're working on it" and may well shove a pen into the eye of the next person who utters this toothless phrase

and

2. Real estate is NOT, I repeat NOT, for the faint of heart.

What phrase have you heard once too often to the point of irritation/annoyance? And what experience have you had with real estate?

Three things I know to be true

The title for this post comes from an exercise that Sarah Kay gives her students when she travels to give workshops in spoken word. I've been thinking about this exercise recently because I've been learning a lot of new things; things I didn't previously know to be true, but now understand to be true (regardless of how ridiculous).

For instance, I now know that bank appraisers of the FHA variety don't really give a shit about actual safety issues and would rather see a cleanly painted front porch, because evidently, it is more important to LOOK good than to BE functional. How very, oddly, disturbingly American. I have also recently learned that when you apply for a mortgage, the lender will find out EVERYTHING about you, going back to years you'd rather forget.

On the home improvement front, I'm helping my beau install a tile floor in his dining room. No, he's not using me as free labor - I volunteered because I want to know how to install a tile floor. I sensed an opportunity to learn a new skill and boy, have I learned a few things. I now know the difference between 118.1 and 118.4 ANSI rated mortar (the former can ONLY be used between plywood and hardiebacker, the latter can be used between that first layer AND between the hardiebacker and tile). I now know what hardiebacker is and that you need a carbide blade to cut it. I now know the durability differences between ceramic, porcelain, and natural stone tiles (porcelain has the highest durability). I now know that notching out doorways in plywood is difficult until you do it once and then it suddenly becomes obvious how you should have been measuring and cutting all along. I also now know that the phrase "the right tools for the job" is more than true - this is an absolute necessity, especially in home improvement projects, unless you intend to spend three times the amount of time or money, not to mention the stress factor.

So my life in the first month and a half of 2012 has been chock full of new insights. But that's not what this post is about. I wanted to think more broadly, more deeply, more generally and think of three things that I know to be true regardless of the situation. Here's what I came up with:

1. Life is an adventure with screaming highs and abysmal lows, so it is better to live deliberately and fearlessly so that you get the most out of the time you have here on earth (including all of the wonderful relationships that you develop).

2. There will always be someone who doesn't like you and their reasons may be directly related to you or may only be tangentially related to you, but the attendant truth is that you have to be ok with people not liking you. And live life deliberately and fearlessly anyway.

3. Continuously gaining new knowledge and experiences makes life more interesting, dynamic, and discussion-worthy.

What three things do YOU know to be true? :)

Adventures in Debt

According to Thomas King, the truth about stories is that's all we are. If this is true, then my story is heavily invested in the debt narrative.

My student loans for grad school are currently in forbearance - I can't afford the payments, which would be $650 a month if I was paying every portion. That's about 25% of my take-home pay. So I'm only paying on my Direct loan from the federal government, which is only 6% of my take-home pay. The bulk of my debt is held by a private debt service company who bought most of my loans. Today, I was paying bills and putting through another request to keep the bulk of my loans in forbearance for another year to give myself a chance to catch up financially and maybe even save some money and I noticed that my loans have risen from a total of $66,000 (principal plus interest since 2006), to over $72,000 thanks to accumulating interest. And that is after I've paid off some of the smaller amounts ($2,500 and under).

Amazing how expensive American education is. But that's not the best part.

In this nation of plenty, I find myself with a really good job - a college professor - a job that comes with a certain amount of suspicion or gravitas, depending on whose opinion is being solicited. I live in a safe neighborhood, have a decent and functional wardrobe, eat fairly healthy foods. But at my job, I and my faculty colleagues still do not have a contract - since August. Therefore, all of my living expenses - from gas to food to rent - have risen, but like many Americans, my salary remains stagnant. I had to do something. Something drastic.

So I'm buying a duplex for $165k. As a first-time home buyer, I receive some rate breaks and with an FHA mortgage, I can put a small amount down as opposed to 20%, which would take me a lifetime to save up. The place I've selected is in tip-top shape - and I don't say that lightly. The mechanicals are damn near perfect - a new roof, new high-energy efficiency HVAC system, and new water heaters within five years. Beautifully maintained. The place won't need serious maintenance for ten years. It's basically a buyer's wet dream.

Becoming a landlord after 23 years of being a tenant might be intimidating, but I am confident I can handle it, especially because this place has a positive cash flow. Fully rented, this place pays for the mortgage and then some - by quite a bit. Once I move in, I will only collect one rent, but that comes within $200 of paying the monthly mortgage, leaving me quite the additional income to pay off bills, save for property maintenance, and save for myself (finally).

Go figure.

Only in America could I be so deeply in debt for my education, have a fantastic job that doesn't pay me enough, and be able to go much deeper into debt in order to increase my salary and be able to afford to live a moderate lifestyle and start really whittling away at paying down my debt.

I suppose it's called playing the game. Gotta pay to play? But part of me also shrinks in horror at the ridiculousness of it. This is some story.

What's your story?