Search results

A woman with Turner syndrome decides to participate in a study at the National Institutes of Health: “I arrived at the NIH Clinical Center alone, early, and unprepared. The nurse responsible for checking me in wasn’t even on duty yet. I had packed my suitcase as if for a four-day business conference, not a hospital […]

The writer investigates the financial realities of attending culinary school, and the hard life of a working chef: “Chef Brad Spence wouldn’t go culinary school if he had to do it all over again. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, the chef/partner of Philadelphia’s Amis moved to New York City, […]

The writer on his debt troubles and his experience with a debt consolidation program: “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the sheriff showed up at my front door and completely upended my sense of security I was only five years removed from receiving a six-figure advance for writing a memoir for Scribner at […]

His pregnant girlfriend’s father had abandoned her and her mother when she was young, and the writer is determined to prove to them that he’ll be a different kind of man and father: “When Kenyatta was 2, her father walked out on his family. He never returned, but his ghost walks with Kenyatta and Camille, […]

Why do we treat student differently than other debt? An argument that it is “a form of social control”: “As states disinvest from public higher education and compel students to take on ever-increasing debt loads to fund their studies, the experience and purpose of higher education is transformed. The pursuit of a college diploma becomes […]

A writer looks back on her costly mistakes—blowing a generous book advance while pursuing a relationship with a married man: “I was 27 the year my first novel sold for half a million dollars. During the three years I spent writing the book, I’d gotten by on next to nothing, eating ramen noodles for dinner […]