Solidarity

One of the four pillars of CCSC is simplicity. This year has been the opposite of simple for me.

We don't have internet at our houses, we share a car, and we're asked to be mindful of how we spend our time. This isn't too awfully hard for me, though I do like to spend my free time reading and listening to music—which is a good use of time—but can sometimes serve as a distraction from problems or just from living life in the present moment. The part that is hard is not being able easily look things up on the internet.

What's hard is that my life has been complicated by things such as health insurance, a car that seems to get a lot of flat tires and has a few other problems, my gym closing not long after I finally found one, all the computer issues I've had, and my student loans (which were supposed to go into deferment this year) haunting me.

So far, of the three lenders I have student loans with, only one has granted me forbearance, another is still pending (for three months), and another was denied. I sent an official AmeriCorps letter from the myAmericorps website, but they didn't accept that.

When I called the lender and explained that I'm in AmeriCorps and am living on a very small stipend, the woman said in a condescending tone, “oh, we don't work with AmeriCorps.” She said it as if AmeriCorps is some shady organization that's under investigation for human trafficking and tax evasion.

In the past week, I've gotten two letter and three phone calls from the lender about an unpaid bill (even though it was, in fact, paid). Two of the calls were within ten minutes of each other. My parents have also been getting these letters and phone calls because they're co-signers. I wasn't surprised at how rude everyone on the phone was, but I was surprised at how rude I was back. I'm usually pretty polite, but I certainly wasn't to them. I blame it on the stress and annoyance.

Being harassed by my lender has made me think about people who have late credit card payments and how the credit card companies call them. I feel annoyed and stressed out about these phone calls. I'm also very worried about this loan and the other loan that the forbearance request is still pending.

Another way we use the word simplicity in CCSC is to mean solidarity with the poor and the populations we serve. I certainly feel solidarity with the poor worrying about money all the time and getting annoying/harassing phone calls from the loan company. It's only been happening to me for a week and will hopefully end soon, but I know that for some people it goes on for years. Maybe they become indifferent about it after a while, but then again, maybe not.