Taking on student debt for my dad
By Sarabeth Murray
Why did I take out student loans?
I did it so I could become a nurse. For my dad.
When I was 3 years old, my father was told he had just six months to live. His cancer was expected to take him fast.
In those early days, Dad would set little milestones for himself. Like, “I’m going to make it to Sarabeth’s first day of kindergarten.” And “I want to see her learn to ride a bike.” Years went by like this, when he was still with us, but never well.
I don’t remember Dad not being sick. He was always checking in to the hospital for something or other. It was so routine that the last time he went for treatment, I didn’t realize he might not come home. But that’s what happened. When I was 17, my father died.
After seeing them at work, so dedicated and generous, it just kind of hit me one day: I wanted to be a nurse, too.
I remember before he left us, we lived in a small apartment and his electric wheelchair was so clumsy he had a hard time managing it. He put a few holes in the drywall there, just trying to move around. It wasn’t easy being chronically ill, but his nurses stuck with him. They kept taking care of him — in the hospital, out of the hospital, all the time, even when his illness was really getting to him.
After seeing them at work, so dedicated and generous, it just kind of hit me one day: I wanted to be a nurse, too. I was so young through my dad’s entire illness, I couldn’t really help out. What I couldn’t do for him, I wanted to be able to do for others. So I signed up at the community college and started down that path.
I would never have been able to go to school without loans. I was barely making $9 an hour as a server at a retirement home, a job I started when I was 15, and our family did not have enough money to pay my tuition. I really was on my own. Even after I started, I had to take a couple of gap years: I just couldn’t work full time and still pass my classes. And then my mom lost her job, so I had to help her out.
I finally finished a bachelor’s in nursing in 2018, eight years after I’d started, and wound up with about $35,000 in student debt.
I would never have been able to go to school without loans.
I can see having to pay interest on credit cards that I’ve allowed to accrue debt. But paying so much interest just because I wanted to become a nurse, to be able to help people the way the nurses helped my dad? That doesn’t seem quite right. But that’s my reality.
I try to watch my spending. I budget with my fiancé. I even read personal finance articles and listen to finance podcasts. I’ve paid my debt down to $20,000, but it has not been easy.
Without financial need, I could have gone straight through school, rather than stopping to work and taking eight years to finish. Without this debt, I could travel more and visit my family in Texas. I would follow up on what my dad taught me: To live life you have to experience things, act on whatever opportunities come your way.
I love my job, and put in 200 percent. I’m at the bedside, but I also get to teach clinical classes to nursing students. I worked at our COVID-19 infusion clinic on my days off, and volunteered at the public swab tent. I’m going on a mission trip in October, and I’ve volunteered to help out with disaster services for the state of Ohio.
This sort of service work is for my dad, but it’s also for my community. That’s good, right?
But how much better would it be if I didn’t have to carry around the burden of student debt every time I take on another shift, and calculate how many hours I have to work in order to make that loan payment?
Nursing is already hard work. We need to make it easier to pay off our debt.
Sarabeth Murray is a registered nurse at The Ohio State University Medical Center and a member of the Ohio State University Nurses Organization in Columbus, Ohio.
Want to read more stories like this? Subscribe to AFT e-newsletters.
