As a public servant, Kate Spaulding qualified for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. (PSLF is for those employed by a U.S. federal, state, local, or tribal government or not-for-profit organization.) After 120 payments toward her federal student loans, she recently received complete forgiveness on her balance of $160,000+. Kate joins a group of 450,000+ Americans who have also received forgiveness through this program.

Kate explained to Nikki how she meticulously tracked and recorded each loan payment and built her career around this long-term loan forgiveness strategy. Her experience with her own student loans has directly influenced her attitudes toward free public education and equity in the United States.

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Transcript – 

Nikki Nolan: Welcome to the podcast.

Kate Spaulding: Thank you so much. I’m so freaking excited to be here.

Nikki Nolan: I am so excited that you are here and I’m excited because something really recently just happened to you. But before we get into that, how much student debt do you have?

Kate Spaulding: All right. So, effectively zero, because my loans were forgiven two days ago. Yeah.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah. And that’s so amazing. I’ve been following you for over a year. I believe I’ve been following you and you’re like, I’ll get it. I’m going to get it. And when you posted that you got it, it was like, you’ve got to be on the podcast to tell me what happened.

Kate Spaulding: Yeah, no, it’s, it’s funny. Cause I’ve, this has been a journey. I mean, the program that I was in, public service loan forgiveness, is 10 years long, but I’ve been dealing with this for longer than 10 years. So it literally has felt like whatever. My entire adult life has been student loans. So it’s, it’s absurd and surreal to say, yeah, I don’t have any, I don’t know if my graduate school debt is all gone.

Nikki Nolan: How much student debt they forgive or how much student debt did you have?

Kate Spaulding: Yeah. Yeah. So they forgive, forgave $163,000. Just under that. And for anyone who’s like, girl, how did you take out that much? I actually didn’t. My graduate degree and living costs and all that when I moved here to New York, I probably only took out a little over a hundred, maybe 110, which is not negligible. I’m not discounting that. But that other 50 to 55 grand worth is interest. Which goes to, goes to show you just how bonkers and just not functioning this higher education industrial complex student debt system is.

Nikki Nolan: It’s, it’s so awful. I can’t. So, at the peak, do how much debt you had, like

Kate Spaulding: Well, that was so you’re going to laugh. That was the peak because I, working in government, we don’t work in government to make a ton of money. And frankly, I’m actually one of the better paid people. I’m not suffering. And I will never in any way try to be like, woe was me, but for what my salary was and how much I had, I paid $46,000 to it.

And I never hit principal once because it was so large, which again is just… it just goes to show the magnitude of how absolutely ludicrous this is and I’m one of the lucky ones who was able to, stay on top of the system and navigate it and watch it like a hawk and ensure that I, got it forgiven.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah. So tell me a little bit about what the impact of student debt has been on your life.

Kate Spaulding: It’s like my middle name, honestly. It has affected all of my decisions. I love the public sector and I love working in government, but I’m also a big union person and there’ve been great jobs at labor unions that I have turned down because working for a labor union, for whatever reason, doesn’t count towards PSLF, which is ridiculous.

Or even if, I mean, I haven’t really been interested in private sector jobs, but I also haven’t really allowed myself to be because it wouldn’t count. And I just wanted to get through this as quickly as possible. And so, yeah, there’s been like a lot of things. I feel like I never…I only just now moved into my own place less than a year ago.

And frankly, that was pandemic plus becoming an aunt plus finally being in slightly better financial shape because my student loans had been paused because of the pandemic since March. So again, I also feel terrible saying this cause I know so many people are struggling. But the last nine of my 120 payments, I technically didn’t have to pay because student loan payments were paused and thankfully those were still counting towards PSLF and I was still working in government at the time.

So, but yeah. I mean literally every decision and worry and waking thought of my twenties and thirties-

Nikki Nolan: Okay.

Kate Spaulding: around student debt. So, I haven’t even fully processed the weight that is like off my shoulders at this point.

Nikki Nolan: I mean you’re two days out. You’re you are like-

Kate Spaulding: fresh out.

Nikki Nolan: You’re so fresh out before we get into your whole life story. I actually think it would be good to tell me about this journey. When did you apply? How, how did this whole thing sort of work?

Kate Spaulding: Yeah.

I went to undergrad, I graduated college from University of Pittsburgh, which I actually do still have a, a little bit of undergraduate loans from- nothing major. And again, as part of the frustration of this journey is I didn’t know to consolidate all of that with my graduate school loans.

So if I had, I mean the interest rates are very low on what I have left, but I still technically have about like $8K of student loans left from undergrad. That if I had consolidated at the beginning of the story, that would have all been forgiven too, but again, this program was new and only started in the George W. Bush Administration, did it because they, I believe they got rid of when you file for bankruptcy, you can’t jettison your student loans as part of that. And so as a way to still keep talent in the public sector because frankly the pay is not there.

And if you’re having these exorbitant student loans, which you can’t get rid of thru bankruptcy, they did, they put together a PSLF. So it was formed in 2007, which was halfway through my graduate school. I went to Pratt Institute. I got my master’s in City and Regional Planning. I don’t regret that.

Pratt is a wonderful school. I had incredible professors. One of whom is Brad Lander. Who’s going to be hopefully the next New York City Comptroller. I learned a ton of really great things and the ethos is there.

But grad school is expensive. Like that’s just, there’s no way around it. And so I got my master’s right in the spring of ’08 and then the economy crashed and no one was hiring and I was like, oh my God, what have I done? I have a $100K in student debt. No one’s hiring. Like, am I the biggest fool on the planet?

Nikki Nolan: Wow.

Kate Spaulding: And I would dumpster dive with the Freegans for food and take jobs here and there to just kind of scrape by. And then finally did land my first position in city government in April of 2009 and have been very privileged and lucky to work as a public servant to the City of New York ever since.

But I remember seeing information about PSLF and being like, wow- that’s, I have to do this program.

And so once I started working in government, I applied and again, I didn’t know, hindsight’s 20/20, but I didn’t know. Like, consolidate everything, every public loan that you have regardless of the interest rate.

There are some other things that I’m sure we’ll talk about, but there’s definitely a lot of tricks of the trade that I would potentially do over. Including just not, yeah, believing in this crazy capitalist system that, if you go to a good school and you work hard, like you’ll get a good job that pays enough.

Like that’s just simply not true. And so we need to reform many things. But especially the higher ed industrial complex and student loan debt.

Nikki Nolan: It’s so, it’s so- I actually didn’t know you went to Pratt. I also went to Pratt.

Kate Spaulding: Yes, yes, that’s right. Amazing.

Nikki Nolan: Oh, very expensive school. It’s very expensive. And I think we had different experiences because I went for a totally different degree, but I would love to get into your story. Tell me a little bit about you.

Kate Spaulding: So, I think I’ve always been kind of a boisterous child. I’m a twin, so that has definitely colored my whole experience around. I think I’m very focused on fairness and equity for people and helping other people and, we’re Libras too. So we’re very much about balance and helping people.

So when I was younger, I used to say that I wanted to be President of the United States. And now, obviously growing older, I was like, maybe not particularly, not for women because they deal with so much crap as elected officials. Hopefully, that barrier will be broken very soon. But, and then I used to think I wanted to be an actress and funnily enough, politics and local government actually melds those two skills very well.

I studied theater, but it was always good to kind of like government and social justice and the sciences. And then when I was at Pitt, I actually took political philosophy classes and urban studies classes. And I can remember as a kid. So I’m from Buffalo, New York. And I can remember the first time my family took me to Toronto and driving up the QEW and seeing the Toronto skyline and all the tall buildings and everything that was going on.

I was like, totally just blown away at how cool and amazing it was. And then I also remember walking the streets and there were all these homeless people begging for money, and I wanted to give them money or give them stuff. And like, you’re not supposed to do that. And so it was this, I can remember being eight and being like, this is so strange that there’s this beautiful stuff when you drive in at the rooftops and buildings and glitz and glamor, and then you get on the ground and it’s extremely sad and gritty. Upsetting honestly. And it doesn’t need to be that way. And I dunno, I think since then, I’ve just always been kind of interested in making the world a better place in whatever way I could use my privilege and abilities and intellect to do that.

Nikki Nolan: Wow. Yeah. So what, what did you, so tell me a little bit about like high school and your decision making to go to college.

Kate Spaulding: Yeah.

I, my family, I’m actually very privileged in the sense that, even all four of my grandparents went to college, which it wasn’t until I was older that I realized that for many families, for most families, particularly in America even, which is supposed to be the land of opportunity, that is absolutely not, uh, uh, a common thing.

So college and higher education was sort of a foregone conclusion for my sister and myself. I can actually remember my parents saying, “you worry about the grades and getting in where you need to get in and we’ll worry about paying for it.” And I was like, okay, cool. Like, blah, blah, blah. And it didn’t really kind of occur to me, about having to pay for school as silly and ridiculous as that sounds.

But also at the same time, like when my parents went to college, college was way less expensive. There were still grants for it. And so student debt was slowly becoming, creepily like the frog in the frying pan, worse and worse, since they had finished their degrees and as my sister and I were coming up.

And so that is when it comes time to be looking at colleges, like it was then very normal that you’d be spending at least. I mean, I, when I graduated high school, 2002, right. So I was entering in the fall 2002 to graduate like $30K was like a cheap school in many ways. Right? Particularly if you wanted to go somewhere that was kind of, well known and, and accredited as a very good school. And so what’s funny is, again, we’re, we’re close to, we’re from Buffalo, so we’re close to Toronto and they were heavily pushing the University of Toronto, which is actually where my sister went for her first years.

And I remember getting, I was doing all these huge applications and it was so tiring and I was exhausted and just like burnt out and- to like NYU and all these different places. And then the University of Pittsburgh sent me an application and waived the application fee. It was literally one page. And I just filled it out and was like, okay well, let’s just see what happens. And then they actually, because I’m out of state – they have in-state tuition that’s cheaper for Pennsylvania residents – they actually gave me like a pretty decent scholarship to go. And I was just like, huh, this seems- I’d never been to Pittsburgh before.

So like we went and visited and I was actually looking at Carnegie Mellon and did not enjoy Carnegie Mellon in any way, shape, or form. But because I was there with the other theater kids – no shade to theater kids. And I was just like, y’all are way too serious, like goodbye. but I really liked Pittsburgh and, I just ended up being like, I think I want to go to Pitt.

And what’s funny is my family – my high school sweetheart was from a Penn State family. So he was going to Penn State and my family was like, “are you sure you’re not going to Pitt just because, blah, blah, blah, is going to Penn State?” And I was like, they’re like three hours away. Like we’re not going to see each other. And then of course we broke up at the end of high school and didn’t see each other.

But going to Pitt was actually really great. And it was much more affordable than the other options I was looking at. And thank God, because I think I left there still with about $20K of undergrad loans for all four years, which, in retrospect is really not bad compared to what people are dealing with.

So the majority of my loans were graduate school related and – sorry that I talk too much, but I just

Nikki Nolan: You’re- no, no, no, no. Please give it all to me, please, please, please.

Kate Spaulding: You’re going to get it all. Don’t worry. I was getting interested in urban studies and I was getting interested in urban planning, but I also, my major was- Pitt has an Honors college major called the Politics/Philosophy major, and it’s like political science, philosophy, and some econ and a lot of people go to law school after that.

So I was actually looking at programs that were five-year programs, law school plus my urban planning degree and being accredited and being done in five years with like even more exorbitant amounts of student

Nikki Nolan: Okay.

Kate Spaulding: loan debt. And I remember taking the, I, I was taking the LSAT senior year, never did as well as I wanted to, which is sort of a theme for me.

I remember working really hard on my SATs and still never doing as well as I want to do. And, I know I’m a very smart woman. So again, meritocracy things are just flawed, but whatever. And I ended up not going to law school because I was just exhausted and I just didn’t feel like the signs were there.

And then, again, a similar pathway – applied to Pratt because I wanted to go to accredited planning schools, had always been drawn to New York City, even though I’d only been there once. And Pratt also gave me a little bit of a scholarship. I mean, it was negligible compared to how much I was going to pay. I think it was maybe one class for free, but, still, maybe I’m a little egotistical, but there’s something about being wanted, and that they are willing to throw some money your way to, to have you come. And, uh, yeah, I moved to Brooklyn, lived in a pantry closet basically my first year.

And that was that and like, yeah. Became best friends with the Bursar’s office and would go and like, you just sign the forms. They’re like, hey, you need this, you need that. And you, you sign the forms and you get, you get the checks and you pay. And then, it’s not until you’re graduating that you’re like, oh, what have I done? How do I have this much tied to me?

Nikki Nolan: So now that you have graduated, what happened after that?

Kate Spaulding: I graduated in two years cause I was going full time. Like one of the nice things about Pratt’s program actually is it’s very friendly to working people. So all the classes are pretty much at night. So that you can go part-time after work. Yeah.

But so I worked on campus and I graduated in two years. It was spring of 2008 and the economy crashed and I was like, oh my God, like, what am I going to do?

And literally every job I applied to was getting like 500, 600 applicants for one job. And I was just like, I knew I wanted to be in the public sector. I knew I wanted to work in government. Originally I was thinking I’d want to work for like the planning department and doing zoning and stuff. But I’m such a people person and particularly around the empowering of voices, like who gets to be there, who doesn’t, what’s decided on with a space. And so, yeah, I ended up getting a job at a local elected officials office and worked there for almost five years.

The one smart thing that I did was I joined the New York City pension, like right away. Like I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing financially, but this, I know I need to do. So I will have a good pension, no matter what happens to me, which is very nice. Yeah.

I’m actually in the same tier that my mom – who’s a public school teacher in Buffalo – will have. So we always talk about like, and it’s, I mean, it’s significantly better than the most recent tier, which is still, again, better than no pension at all. So I started working when I was like 24. And so yeah, I became vested at 29 actually. And then, yeah, so I’m, I’m good on that front, thankfully.

But I remember there’s a story of, it was in January of 2012. And so I was paying my loans, paying my loans. Right. And I was doing auto pay. And something happened. I don’t know what. Probably partially my own fault if I’m being honest, where it wasn’t income-based anymore, it just went to the normal amount and they debited it.

So they just, all of a sudden they’ve debited $1,400 out of my account, which at that age was catastrophic, I overdrew – the whole thing. And I’m like on the phone crying, like, what is happening? What did you guys do? Blah, blah. And they’re like, oh, wow. This is the, like the amount, because it’s not on income-based anymore.

And I was like, why not? So we get it sorted, but the way that they would get it sorted, which is frustrating, cause they would put you on a forbearance, which honestly would take like six months at the lowest, which when you’re that age, you’re like, oh, great. I don’t have to pay my student loans for six months.

But in hindsight you’re like, damn it, that’s six months of time that I lost when I could have been paying that would have been counting. So that is why, even though I’ve worked for the New York City government for 12 years since April 2009, I only just got it forgiven now because I had some forbearances.

I had a few situations, another story, another meltdown at my office. This is a different office. I literally had a meltdown because I would, I would, I would regularly go on FedLoans website. And this was before they had the payment tracker you, you just had to, they would give you an estimate of how many you had from the last time that you recertified your employment.

So I would do this thing where I would regularly call them like every three to four months. And I would record the phone calls, which perhaps is not legal, so my lawyer friends have said, but whatever, I’m not sharing the phone calls and the recordings and they will be deleted. And I would – the whatever, poor, you know, nice technician that I would get. And I would just, I finally would just go through line by line in my Excel spreadsheet with the date and the amount of the payments so that we could match up what they had as payments and what I had. And I remember I had a mental breakdown one day at work because there was a payment that they weren’t counting. And I was like, why aren’t you counting this?

And then I looked and I had, because I had stopped doing auto pay because of the situation in 2012 that I spoke about earlier. So I would pay it myself and I miss-paid it by 10 cents. And so it was under by 10 CENTS. And so it didn’t count.

And I lit-er-al-ly lost my mind. I was just like, are you kidding me? Blah, blah, blah. This is ridiculous. I’ll pay the 10 cents more or whatever. And they’re like, no, sorry, it doesn’t count. And I was just so mad at myself.

And then there was this other situation that was happening where – so I like to have even amounts taken out of my account if I can. So before I knew how to, how to do it, I would round up slightly. And they were considering that as me trying to either do a second payment in that month, or like pay ahead, which you can’t do. So what was happening was they were starting to not count payments that I had around that payment, even though I was making one payment each month.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah.

Kate Spaulding: In their weird tracking system was saying that I was trying to make multiple payments in a month because I was paying more than what I was supposed to be paying. And I was like, are you freaking serious? Like, you’re literally penalizing someone who’s trying to pay this off sooner. But again, it has to do with this program was new and nobody understood, you need to just do your employment recertification every year, resend and your income info every year.

And then just like set it that they just take out that amount and that’s it. And as long as you’re doing that on time and in full every month, once you do that for 120 months, it’s forgiven. And if you’re working in government or a qualified non-profit.

So I would be on the phone with them, like all the time. And I’m very lucky that I had a job that allowed me to do that, cause I would call on my lunch break basically every time, and finally got that sorted. So then there were, so then, then you have to like go into this review process. You have to be like, well, I’m contesting some of those.

So I would regularly contest and have them like, look back at these payments. And finally, some of those, I think all the ones that the issue was I had rounded up and so they were counting two in the month after – those got rectified. And I think even I could be wrong because I, I need to, I need to go in and look. I don’t know if it’s still there. I think actually the 10 cent one ended up counting. Like I think maybe as part of this thing that Congress did later, where they kind of like had that pool of money to help out people who were in the wrong program. So something happened where I looked later, this was maybe like last year some time, and ones that I had been like, all right, it sucks, but they don’t count and had taken out of my spreadsheet were back in as counting payments. So, there were still other ones, I still wish I had done things better and not taken forbearances and only ever paid exactly what was supposed to be paid.

But you live and learn. So those are my lessons: consolidate everything the second – the second – you have all your debt and, you’re working in public service, consolidate it all. Like what, no matter the interest rate, as long as you can put it in there, do your income recertification every year, update your money info every year. Unless you suddenly have to make less money for whatever reason and then update it right away because they can adjust it.

Nikki Nolan: Okay.

Kate Spaulding: And then yeah just like track them meticulously and only pay what they say to pay. And then after 10 years, so, like a 10th or a quarter of your life, depending you’ll be done.

Nikki Nolan: Tell me a little bit about your spreadsheet. Like, what do you track-

Kate Spaulding: Oh my God. Yeah. So my spreadsheet, so this is a spreadsheet that has everything. It has my debts, it has my bills. It has all this stuff. But, yeah, so it was, it was, it was the month or a year. I should have moved it. Oh yeah. The date and then the amount. And then I had another column that was the number.

And so I just started tracking like one blah, blah, blah, and then would keep tracking all the way down so that I knew by the time I reached whatever, that, and it kind of helped it almost made it like more enjoyable when you were paying your student loan then cause then you’re like, oh, that’s my hundredth payment.

Oh, that’s my, what I mean? Like I see you can physically see the progress as opposed to feeling like you’ve just no control and no whatever in this situation. So yeah, that’s, it’s my, yeah. And I would bold the ones that were like, I bolded like 60, like my halfway point. I bolded, 100, I bolded 120 obviously. Cause they’re exciting, so yeah.

Nikki Nolan: And so thank God we’re on the pause, but like, so most people, they still have to continue to pay and then they get refunded. But, but because we’re on the pause, you didn’t have to continue to pay and get refunded. Okay cool.

Kate Spaulding: I was extremely, I mean, I would much rather COVID obviously never happened. 600,000 Americans were still alive and millions of people around the world were still alive. I would still rather have all of that not happened. However, because that’s not what happened. And I’m no fan of President Trump obviously, but because he, his administration, thoroughly botched the Coronavirus response, and or, the fact that America is just like an absolute hellscape when it comes to healthcare anyway, what he did do and what the current administration, Biden administration, has at least has been continuing was they paused the payments.

And they allowed those payments to count for people who are in public service loan forgiveness, as long as you were still working. And I think they even, I could be wrong, but I feel like there were talks because I actually track and pay attention to this because it was so much of my life. I should’ve said that at the beginning.

I think you’re familiar with this. I put you on it, but I would send around news and track all news around public service loan forgiveness, because this was like, I had structured my entire life around this. Like my careers, the jobs I took, where I lived, everything was structured around this. And I remember, I know this is such a privileged thing to say because there were so many reasons to be absolutely upset on November 8th, 2016 when, he who shall not be named was, I guess you could say elected president because nobody frigging voted. And one of the things I was selfishly really scared about is I was like, great, he’s going to get rid of loan forgiveness. And he tried. Betsy Devos tried numerous times. There were multiple reports and investigations and issues, around the Department of Education trying to get rid of the program and FedLoan just being an absolute mess. But thankfully, they were unsuccessful. And so that was actually when my vigilance really kind of went into just ridiculous levels because I just did not trust the administration at all. And so that was when I started doing like, even more regular calls, going through all the payments, just everything that I could do to make sure. And so I actually started a Google group around this and it was just everyone I knew who was in public service loan forgiveness, or, and then I’m on a bunch of listservs and so people send it around there.

And so there’s like a community of us and we just kind of help each other talk about our experiences. And I did actually share it on Thursday. I was like, hey guys, personal news, it can happen, my loans have been forgiven, like stick with it, stay positive. Like, and they forgave $160,000. And people were so appreciative. Someone was like, this is literally the best news I’ve heard all week. Thank you for sharing this. And I, again, it wasn’t to brag because I understand everybody’s like dealing with stuff, but it was really just like, keep, keep happening, stay on it. It will happen for you.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah, I’ve been seeing actually, I’m in a few, like I’m in like some Reddit groups. I’m in a Facebook group because I just love to keep track of this kind of stuff. And I’ve been seeing in this last week, so many people getting

Kate Spaulding: Oh, that’s great.

Nikki Nolan: All their loans canceled. And so-

Kate Spaulding: Yeah,

Nikki Nolan: it does give me a little more faith in this system, especially with the temporary federal student loan forgiveness, which you mentioned earlier. I think that’s what it’s, it’s like the program where if you weren’t in the right,

Kate Spaulding: Right.

Nikki Nolan: Right payment plan, or you had something that, that Congress gave some money to that. Yeah. It’s really, it’s really, really cool. Is there anything I haven’t covered that you want to talk about?

Kate Spaulding: I don’t know how much advocacy we want to get into, but I think it’s important that people, if we’re going to live in a system that requires people to be heavily educated, which I am fully, I fully support, but I believe that higher education should be free.

Because I believe that an educated populace only helps all of society and that is a worthwhile endeavor and I don’t care how much money it costs. I always get in fights with people who are like education reformers, who think we spend too much money on education. And I’m like, are you out of your mind? We spend gazillions on the military, we can spend money on education.

So like they just forgive everything? Making it seem like you’re bilking the system and I’m like, well, no, I could’ve been making three times as much money doing a job that I hate that probably doesn’t bring value to the world. And I would have paid them off in a couple of years.

And that’s, that is the trade-off, local governments or non-profits or wherever it is, get to have and hire talent, at a rate they can afford, or probably even too low of a rate. And the deal, the compact, is that then you’re not in student loan debt for your whole life.

I’m still gonna stay passionate and focused on, not only preserving, but strengthening and increasing loan forgiveness options generally, PSLF and others. But we honestly need to just get to a place where higher education is free. Because there’s some people, I mean, I can remember this is really going to date me and reveal more about me, but I remember going to some Occupy Wall Street education sessions, and there was a session about student debt and a woman had come and she was a black woman. And she was like, guys, I get that you want debt forgiven and debt is this crisis, I fully understand all those things. But you also have to understand that debt is actually a privilege. And this was in 2011. So all of us are like, why, what are you talking about? Debt is the worst. Debt is an anvil. It’s an albatross on our necks blah, blah. And she was like, no, no, no. Some people can’t even get debt to go to school where they want to go. The banks won’t loan to them or the student loan servicers won’t give them enough. There are some of us who are completely excluded from even this capitalist hellscape to, to, to get a better education.

And that blew my mind. And again, I, I’m like totally revealing my like, just utter whatever about certain things that I just didn’t realize this, but like, so that is why for many reasons we need to get rid of it. Because these things are not only terrible to people, but there’s some people who can’t even access the system at all, period.

So higher education needs to be freaking free. And that is how we actually have a country that is better to its people, uh, dare I say great to its people. That is one of the things that has to be done, has to.

Nikki Nolan: I agree. I’m in full agreement there. I feel like college should be free and it shouldn’t be means tested by like the fact of like, oh, people whose parents make under $125,000 a year. Like this fact that college is so tied to your parents’ standing is so ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous.

Kate Spaulding: It’s totally, I mean, it’s just entrenching generational wealth and access all over again. When, when education is supposed to be quote “this great equalizer.”

Um, but it’s not, like, and some people can’t, if you’re having to go, part-time like they’ve shown the part-time, especially with, going through a job. Like that’s where the majority of the default is because that’s, that’s stressful. I was very lucky and able to go full-time and not be, having a full-time job and getting a degree. Like these are all things that prevent people of just lesser means from being able to do stuff. And it’s ridiculous.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah, Melissa Byrne, who has been on my podcast twice, calls it the upward mobility tax. And I-

Kate Spaulding: Yes.

Nikki Nolan: feel like that is so accurate that, that, like we have created this upward mobility tax on such a significant portion of people. And it’s ridiculous. Like you shouldn’t have to be rich to be educated. That’s ridiculous.

Kate Spaulding: I totally agree.

Nikki Nolan: Well, we’re getting close to the end. So I would love to know what advice would you give your younger self knowing all of the stuff you know now.

Kate Spaulding: Some of these things are hard because now working in the criminal justice system and understanding that our brains are not fully formed in terms of decision-making and impulse control until we’re 25. So in many ways, college aged kids and even graduate students, shouldn’t be able to even take out this amount of money, until after 25. But this amount of money shouldn’t happen in any way.

So I would say to younger Kate, keep wanting to do what you want to do. Like, I don’t think compromise on what you want to study and I’m certainly not someone who goes into a career for money, which I also know is a place of privilege, but you have to do what – if you’re going to work, right?

If you’re going to have to work your whole life, it should be doing something meaningful and that you enjoy and where you’re treated and compensated well. And that’s part of why the labor movement is so important to me. But I would say, go somewhere less expensive. I mean, I did go where I got scholarships, but Pratt is a private institution, CUNY Hunter, which is a public institution, which actually has a very similar ethos to Pratt. And I love Pratt and I will never not steer people away from Pratt, but private school is expensive.

And I, again, I wish I had known to consolidate everything right away. Just kind of those little tricks that I talked about before, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I think, as frustrating as this whole thing has been, I do believe everything happens for a reason and I have learned a lot from it around my passions and the work that I’ve gotten to do.

So, I guess I used to beat myself up about it a lot and I used to be very embarrassed and hold a lot of shame about having as much student debt or debt generally as I did. And I’ve worked really hard to pay off and get out of other debt, while simultaneously doing this.

So I think I would just say like, think, think about stuff that you want, but at the end of the day, nothing is actually a major mistake. You can always change. You can always decide to do something else so you can change your life at any point. But, I’m hoping that we make it better and fairer, and more equitable for people so that these types of major life decisions aren’t having to be made when you’re either in college or fresh out of college or in high school.

Basically, just let kids live. You’re not allowed to just study painting for painting’s sake anymore because everything is tied to “Well, can you make money painting? Can you do this?” It’s like, no, we need to just teach people and allow people to be educated and learn what they want to learn for the sake of learning and critical theory and exposing themselves to other things.

And we don’t, we don’t do that. Everything is like, well what’s, how can you monetize this? And then I was like, so sad and joyless and sick and wrong.

Nikki Nolan: Full agreement. I fully agree with you. Yeah. It’s ah, the world is so complicated. Well, is there anything that you want to promote?

Kate Spaulding: No, I think that was it. Just stay strong, everybody. Like you’ll, you’ll get there soon. It is possible. And I didn’t think it was for a long time, but it, it truly, truly is possible.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much for being here. It’s been such a joy to talk to you.

Kate Spaulding: Thank you, Nikki. Thank you for doing this. I think it really is an important contribution to the discourse around this. I really, really appreciate you doing this.

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