Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom by Ken Ilgunas Read Free Book Online Page B

merely because he wanted it; and so timid that our government and politics teacher once pulled me aside before class to ask me to speak, just so he could hear what my voice sounded like. Josh’s drawbacks were more physical. He was unnaturally hirsute, shaving off a unibrow daily, coming to terms with random patches of back hair that escaped the reach of his razor, and contending with ass hair so long that its length—as he despairingly put it in one of his e-mails—could be curled “2–3 times around my finger.”
    Josh, though, had more than his fair share of redeeming qualities. He hated high school as much as I did but got high grades effortlessly. He had a gift for logical thinking that would make him, years later, the champion of the World Series of Euchre (a strategic card game popular in the Midwest and western New York). In college, Josh excelled, graduating with a 3.83 GPA and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He was the top runner-up for his senior class’s Most Outstanding Student award, and his professors would cite his work in their own papers, one of them calling Josh the “most impressive student I’ve had the pleasure to teach.” He was an idealist, fascinated as he was with the history of oppressed peoples in the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, African American civil rights movement, and today’s gay rights movement. He was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s
Eichmann in Jerusalem,
as Arendt’s words had shown him how corrupt governments are empowered by a complacent citizenry. He haddreams of joining the Peace Corps so he could help the poor and sick. It seemed he was destined for greatness.
    Yet despite all the honors, accolades, and good intentions, Josh was in the same situation as I was. And even though Alfred gave him scholarships, his education still ended up costing him. He left Alfred with a B.A. in history and political science along with $55,000 in student loans.
    After four years of school, he had no better idea about what he should do with his life than I did. So he did what many clueless young people do: He went back to graduate school to be part of a fully funded history Ph.D. program at the University of Delaware. But after one year—between second thoughts about grad school and worries about the interest that was stealthily accruing on his loans (which had leaped to $58,000)—he dropped out of school to find work.
    Josh and I were nothing out of the ordinary. Like us, many students had spent their years in college thinking they’d get that well-paying, planet-saving job, even if they’d heard horror stories from recent underemployed grads. Those jobs, of course, no longer exist (if they ever did). By 2009, 17.4 million college graduates had jobs that didn’t even require a degree. There are 365,000 cashiers and 318,000 waiters and waitresses in America who have bachelor’s degrees, as do one-fifth of those working in the retail industry. More than 100,000 college graduates are janitors and 18,000 push carts. (There are 5,057 janitors in the United States who have doctorates and professional degrees!)
    I’d heard of people who’d spent years, decades, their whole lives (!) paying off their debts, working eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, decades, lifetimes, epochs!
    Before Alaska, I’d figured that I, too, was destined to be one of them. As I approached midlife, I’d begin to crave a red sports car or an affair to compensate for the youthful longings that I’d put on hold in my twenties. My life would be so monotonous and one-dimensional that I’d resort to aberrant role-playing sexual fantasies, delving into monthly feasts of feet, fetters, and fetishes behind my wife’s back at “insurance conventions.”While hunched over reports, memos, and files, or in attendance at a grueling series of training sessions on diversity, sexual harassment, and office injury prevention, I’d remind myself that it will all be worth it when the mortgage is paid off and I can cash