This past week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., joined Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to call for free college and the cancellation of student loans so that everyone can attend their “dream school.” Ocasio-Cortez went on to discuss how unjust the voluntary debt was, and just recently, Sanders introduced a proposal to wipe out all $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt.
What Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders failed to recognize, in the midst of their dream-catching and emotional narrative, was that the young people in question all made a voluntary and deliberate decision to take on student loan debt. And this is just the first choice of many of the trade-offs that come with adult life.
With the options of installments at apparel stores, car leases with zero down-payment, and credit card bills with skyrocketing totals, millennials have become addicted to instant gratification. The dominant attitude among my generation today is that there’s no need to wait on my “dream,” when I can deal with the consequences of my choices later.
Leftists demands that student loan debt be canceled so that young people can attend their “dream school” only further deprive the next generation of the lesson every adult must learn: Actions have consequences, and life is about trade-offs, especially those pertaining to finances.
Unfortunately, congressional socialists don’t seem to care.
Sanders took to Twitter to say, “The American people deserve freedom – true freedom. And you are not truly free when you graduate college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt.” What Sanders failed to mention is that freedom allowed individuals the choice to take on the debt that came with attending a university they could not afford.
Our country is suffering from a $22 trillion national debt, because political leaders, such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders, encourage immediate gratification and ignore long-term consequences. The dream school debt that young people carry would only be handed off to the American people, who did not make the choice to attend their “dream school.” In fact, Americans who chose to decline their dream school in order to escape debt may end up paying for the actions of those who made less responsible decisions.
It looks as if the lesson of growing up escaped both students and government officials.
For generations, young people have given up their “dreams” for the sake of responsibility and self-preservation. And that’s adulthood. Becoming an adult means that you either wait until you can afford something before you pay for it, or you look for another option that will not have long-term detrimental effects on your financial well-being. College is the first of many of these choices in adulthood.
One teacher from Tustin, California, explained that when he graduated from college, he and his wife moved into an empty apartment until they could afford a sofa, then a dinner table, and so on. They bought more, as they could afford it.
Uncomfortable and sometimes far from ideal, this is what adulthood looks like.
But the truth is, fulfilling dreams is often uncomfortable and is almost never immediate. The point is not to stop dreaming; dreams create progress. But those with dreams must also have the prudence to fulfill them wisely and not recklessly.
The most valuable outcome of college is learning to become an adult and prepare ourselves for the rest of our adult lives, but if we make choices, refuse to accept the possible ugly outcomes, and default on others cleaning up our messes — financial or otherwise — then we have missed the point. Dreams can come true, but sometimes they require the lesson of patience or compromise.
We are not entitled to our dreams, but we do possess the power to work toward them. And with this work and discipline comes the enlightenment of truly growing up.
Isabella S. Redjai is a student at Hillsdale College and an editor at the Hillsdale Collegian.
