Decisions

There are several of my FB friends who remember me right after my high school days. I made the decision at the very last minute to go to Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches. When I say last minute, there is one of my FB friends who can remember that I told her I had made the decision not to go to college and then called her the next day from campus and said "surpise, I have changed my mind and I am at college now". I obviously put a lot fo thought into my future. My college was paid for by student loans. I went to SFA for three semesters, had a different major every semester, and thought a GPA was like a batting average; no number in front of the decimal. The last two semesters I did not buy books because that would have taken away from my beer money. There are people who are FB friends that will tell you I was fun to hang out with but their GPA was probably negatively impacted because of me. Those student loans allowed me to experience a carefree life for a year and a half. I can assure you my parents were not bragging to their friends about their "student" son. Shortly after leaving SFA I got a job in a power plant and worked shift work for 6 years before being severed in a cut back. I lost my job right before Kimberley and I were married. I went back to school full-time while working full-time driving an 18-wheeler to the brewery and back. I took that job because a guy named Jim Ferris, who is an owner of Wismer Distributing offered it to me where I would not draw unemployment, back then it was demoralizing to get government assistance of any kind. Kimberley worked hard as well. We barely made ends meet, but bought a house from my brother for $40K, had babies in the next to last semester, and even paid off the student loans I had from my SFA party. I went two years to a community college before going to U of H - Clear Lake. I received an accounting degree, had a very high GPA, and ended up going to work for a big 6 accounting firm. It is amazing what being serious about your future does for you. Later, I realized I loved studying accounting but not being an accountant. My point in sharing this rambling testimony is to say my student loans paid for a life of bad decisions and mine and Kimberley's hard work paid for those loans as well as my education. I didn't go to an expensive school but my education helped me pay for my kids to get their undergrads from one. Bad decisions look like a guy that is getting drunk multiple times a week, never studying, not buying books, floundering in life, and going to an expensive school to get a degree that does not help you get a good job. While my boys were going to Baylor I met many students who were getting degrees that would never offer a job that makes a good salary, if they could get a job at all, and they were going to a school that costs $65k/yr. using student loans to get that degree. That may be a worse decision than mine was, at least I knew I needed to go back to school and get a degree that could get me a job. Loan forgiveness does not help our society, but helps pay for bad decisions. There are many people who are going through school who searched for the cheapest path for an eductaion and work full-time to pay for it, and are coming out debt free, those people should be rewarded. Some of those are working at the same Budweiser distributorship that I did to pay for their shcool. Some are even sacrificing years of their lives to serve our country to help with that cost. Loan forgiveness without loan rejection is a very bad and costly idea that leads to poverty, but working hard while being debt free leads to prosperity for individuals and our nation.