However, she is also a runaway slave. That’s not too comforting, now is it?

She is not a runaway slave of the chattel slavery sort, but she is a runaway slave of the indebted servitude kind. She is an indentured servant. That means that she is bound by contract to work for a fixed period of time, typically several years, in exchange for the food, clothing, lodging, transportation, training and other necessities that she uses during her term of indenture. And all her years in college are part of that term of indenture.

If she is unwilling to meet her contract, someone must redeem her. Who is willing to be her redeemer? Who is willing to be the redeemer of the millions of students like her who are well on their way to a similar crisis as that which she is now confronting? And, if someone redeems her without her making any effort whatsoever to pay back as much as she possibly can without becoming irredeemable, then why should anyone attempt to redeem her?

Worse yet, were she to say that she “deserves” to be redeemed, as so many in her class have the audacity to utter with a self-righteous sense of entitlement (“I was tricked into borrowing thousands of dollars to spend a year in Italy studying History of Renaissance Music Therapeutics…”), then why should she be redeemed at all?

The best advice to give Dora is to understand that childhood has been long over for her and no responsible adult will express or practice real mercy toward her unless she first recognizes her errors and then attempts to make amends for them. With such an expression of maturity will come the kind of help that she needs.

I do not recommend that she look into bankruptcy first. I recommend that she stop getting in debt immediately, step out of the college life bubble and start working like a maniac to pay off her debts. She ought to attempt to renegotiate her debts, once she comes to know de facto what she is able to command as a wage earner in the market.

If her creditors are unwilling to reason with her, then she should own up to the fact that she will be an indentured slave for several years. But I do strongly urge her then to make it no more than a decade of her life and to strive for manumission with the help of some advocate.

I know I’m using archaic language. It is because we have a generation that has embraced archaic behavior and is living archaic miseries for which archaic remedies were effective enough to give us subsequent freedoms, that we’ve traded back today for evils of the past.

My strongest recommendation to students like Dora is to become entrepreneurial to get out of debt as quickly as your full youthful energies and desires to help your neighbors will allow. Here is a further elaboration on that point: http://www.startingyourownbusi…

However, she is also a runaway slave. That’s not too comforting, now is it?

She is not a runaway slave of the chattel slavery sort, but she is a runaway slave of the indebted servitude kind. She is an indentured servant. That means that she is bound by contract to work for a fixed period of time, typically several years, in exchange for the food, clothing, lodging, transportation, training and other necessities that she uses during her term of indenture. And all her years in college are part of that term of indenture.

If she is unwilling to meet her contract, someone must redeem her. Who is willing to be her redeemer? Who is willing to be the redeemer of the millions of students like her who are well on their way to a similar crisis as that which she is now confronting? And, if someone redeems her without her making any effort whatsoever to pay back as much as she possibly can without becoming irredeemable, then why should anyone attempt to redeem her?

Worse yet, were she to say that she “deserves” to be redeemed, as so many in her class have the audacity to utter with a self-righteous sense of entitlement (“I was tricked into borrowing thousands of dollars to spend a year in Italy studying History of Renaissance Music Therapeutics…”), then why should she be redeemed at all?

The best advice to give Dora is to understand that childhood has been long over for her and no responsible adult will express or practice real mercy toward her unless she first recognizes her errors and then attempts to make amends for them. With such an expression of maturity will come the kind of help that she needs.

I do not recommend that she look into bankruptcy first. I recommend that she stop getting in debt immediately, step out of the college life bubble and start working like a maniac to pay off her debts. She ought to attempt to renegotiate her debts, once she comes to know de facto what she is able to command as a wage earner in the market.

If her creditors are unwilling to reason with her, then she should own up to the fact that she will be an indentured slave for several years. But I do strongly urge her then to make it no more than a decade of her life and to strive for manumission with the help of some advocate.

I know I’m using archaic language. It is because we have a generation that has embraced archaic behavior and is living archaic miseries for which archaic remedies were effective enough to give us subsequent freedoms, that we’ve traded back today for evils of the past.

My strongest recommendation to students like Dora is to become entrepreneurial to get out of debt as quickly as your full youthful energies and desires to help your neighbors will allow. Here is a further elaboration on that point: http://www.startingyourownbusinessovernight.com/college-student-debt.html