It didn’t seem so bad while you were in school – yes, you’d have to pay for it eventually, but here it is, tens of thousands of dollars a year to support not only your Master’s degree in ethnomusicology, but the biggest parties in the conference, and that one week in Cozumel you’ve sworn never to tell anyone about, and now it’s due.

You’ve already got a job lined up after graduation, but it’s not in your field (what is, anyway?), and at $13.60 per hour, with food, shelter, the health insurance penalty, and a couple of cases of beer a week to pay first, that doesn’t leave much for paying off your loans, let alone starting that 401(k) or finally going to London. Even on the income-based plan, you’re still looking at 40 years of your disposable income eaten up to pay for that education, and all of a sudden you regret everything you’ve learned, and start researching more and more drastic ways to get free… here are a few that are recommended around the Internet, some of which work, and some of which really, really, don’t. Read more…