For thirty glorious seconds I believed I was free.
I was scrolling my bank statements like an archaeologist with bad posture and worse eyesight when I noticed something missing:
no student loan payment.
$175 — gone.
I sat there in my bed like a woman who had just been told she was secretly a princess. I thought, this is it. I’ve graduated from being billed for my own personality.
Then I checked again.
Turns out I hadn’t finished paying it off.
I had just finished seeing properly.
Adult heartbreak arrives quietly, disguised as optimism.
I remember the day my aunt told me she finally finished paying for being twenty. We were at Wonderland, of all places, in line for a ride.
At the time I didn’t understand.
Now I do.
Finishing student loans isn’t just a bill ending.
It’s the moment your education stops being a cage and starts being an asset.
When your brain becomes profit instead of rent.
The system is wild when you think about it.
“Congratulations on improving yourself.
Now please pay for the privilege until your hairline changes.”
We treat ten years of debt like a personality trait instead of what it really is — a subscription to a version of you that already exists.
I did everything the responsible way:
• college first to save money
• transfer to university
• living at home
• buses instead of residence
Not “cheap.”
Strategic.
I hacked the game as much as the game allowed.
And still the game sent invoices.
People romanticize university like it’s Hogwarts with parking passes.
Ninety percent of it was just reading the textbook at home while a professor read the same textbook out loud for participation marks.
Eye contact: 10% of your grade.
Original thought: optional.
Some professors were brilliant — taught outside the book, taught life, taught how to think. Those ones changed me.
Others just opened the PDF and said, “Let us begin our ritual.”
I don’t regret my degree.
I regret the lie attached to it.
The promise used to be:
degree = stable job = dignity = cottage one day
Now it’s more like:
degree = group project with three ghosts + a LinkedIn password
And don’t get me started on law school math.
Same tuition.
Same exams.
Same burnout.
Discounted paycheck.
If women are getting 60% of the salary, I want 40% off tuition and a complimentary croissant.
That’s not feminism.
That’s arithmetic with boundaries.
For those thirty seconds when I thought the debt was gone, I imagined ridiculous things:
• buying fresh fruit
• tipping like a rapper with a kind mother
• saying “yes” without opening a spreadsheet
Freedom isn’t yachts.
It’s breathing without receipts.
I’m not anti-education.
I’m anti-scam.
If you need a loan to learn something in 2026, make sure the knowledge can fight back. Make sure it can feed you. Make sure it doesn’t come with a decade-long emotional ankle monitor.
Because education should feel like a door, not a mortgage with opinions.
I’ll finish paying it.
Of course I will.
And the day it ends, I might go to Wonderland again.
Until then, I’m collecting interest on my own mind.
Slowly.
Legally.
With snacks from home.
— Karny
Editor’s Note:
For thirty seconds I tasted a future without invoices addressed to my younger self. It was delicious. I plan to visit again — permanently.