Hi, my name is M and I have $70,000 in student debt. How is this possible? I didn't go to an ivy league school and I didn't even live on campus! What I did was go to graduate school. Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, supposed to help you get a leg up on life and forever leave that paycheck-to-paycheck experience you had while in school. Now that I have graduated, I am beginning to feel the noose that is student loans upon my neck. This debt is so overwhelming at times, I feel the stress creep upon me and I can't even breathe. I did what I was supposed to do. I stayed out of trouble, went to school, worked hard and didn't get sidetracked by boys. And yet, I feel I'm being punished. I didn't have health insurance while in school because it was out of my price range. I didn't get help with food or housing. The most I got from the government was my $200 back in taxes. Sometimes I feel like I should have taken the easy way out, should have gone wild, had a couple of kids and have the government give me housing, money for food and schools fall all over themselves to give me scholarships and grants, all the while praising how "brave" I am and how I'm such an example to the youth. Instead, I live with four other people, scrape my pennies, contemplate selling my car and sending out hundreds of resumes and cover letters that apparently never see the light of day. So I work in an administrative capacity in a job I like, but which I know can never begin to cover my student loans, and try to work as hard as possible so I can hopefully get a raise or promotion sometime soon. It seems our priorities are backwards in this country when we expect the youngest, with the least experience or job potential, to shoulder such a load of debt or be priced out of higher education altogether. There is a true meritocracy building in this country, but not the kind we idealize. There are simply those children with rich parents who can buy them the education of their dreams and everybody else, who fights for the scraps and spends a lifetime paying off debt that prevents them from ever being able to enjoy the higher status that their education gave them. I would love to see higher education not used as a divider but go towards the models used by other countries; namely where those children who test high are given an opportunity to study at the best institutions at no cost. I fear the elites are too entrenched in America to ever allow us to move to such a system and as a result, education will remain a golden ring that everyone aspires to, but that few can ever reach.