I try not to pay attention to it, but that doesn't really work for me.
To be honest, my law school debt casts a cloud over my entire existence. I know most of us have it, and we just deal with it, but that doesn't make it any better. You go to the Dept. of Education and calculate what your monthly repayment will be like, and then you despair some more. You realize that you'll likely be making peanuts in this economy and despair a little more. Wonder if you would have been better off taking a low-paying job with your undergrad degree...but without this handicapping debt. You flirt with deferring your repayments to the "25 year plan" rather than the default 10-year plan, but can't stomach paying that much interest. You calculate how much disposable income you'll have per month, after state and federal taxes, and loan repayment. You make different models based off of several prospective starting salaries, which run the gamut from depressingly realistic to overly optimistic.
Oh wait, obsess much?
In the end, all you can do is repay them...or skip the country, I guess. Many people before us have managed. I'm sure we will, too.
That being said, if I could take a prospective law student and give him my wizened advice today, I would sternly caution him about the evils of taking on mountainous debt to try and grab an ever-shrinking slice of the decent-salaried pie. There are much easier, and less stressful, ways.
Discussion
Resources
