I was in the generation of kids who were told that getting college degrees would open the door to great paying jobs, so rack up all the student debt it takes cuz you can pay it off easily after you sort through your job offers. 
Maybe there was even a time that was true, but although the unpaid internship market is through the roof, the job market is XXXX and my degrees are not competitive. I tried so hard for so long ( 2.5 years ) to get work in my field while scrounging on XXXX, trying to land any job in any field, usually part time and/or seasonal. When offered a full time year round position, albeit for $ XXXX/hour XXXX hours/week, I took it and have given up on trying to get work in my field. 
I have about $ 300K in loans. My federal loans are fine because Income Based Repayment brings them down to $ XXXX/month- even though Navient tries their hardest to obscure that it 's an option, and wo n't even, insofar as I can tell, tell you how to apply for it. The bulk of the loans, however, are private Navient loans, and recourse is practically nonexistent. I ran up my forbearance time while un ( der ) employed ( paying {$150.00} each time- paying money to not pay money so I ultimately pay them more money? ), and then they set it to interest only payments, which still works out to over 100 % of my income. Every payment I 've ever made has been to reduce my delinquency. Now they 're saying that interest-only payments is another thing that runs out and soon they 're going to ask me for EVEN MORE money- presumably 200+ % of my paltry income. It 's not that I 'm unwilling to pay- I 've been trying to pay like 20+ % of my pathetic income toward it, occasionally jeopardizing my ability to pay for food, but at this point I think the smartest option would be just to let it go into collection cuz Massachusetts will only let them garnish 15 % of my wages.