I moved to the United States [from Japan] as a teenager and the school music program was where I found other students that I could really connect with, so I formed an early view that music education in schools is a great way for bringing people together. And my students seem to really love music class, which is great!
I went to a master’s program at Columbia [University] and Columbia was quite expensive. As a result, at the point that I finished Columbia, I was about $100,000 in debt. In 2020, my final payments were $730 a month—a significant chunk of income.
It was a struggle. For the first few years, I was living with my mom. It took years until I got on the financial footing to be able to rent. Finally, last year, I was able to get a home with a mortgage. These sorts of life goals had to be deferred because of the amount of student loans I had and my monthly student loan payments.
I became eligible for loan forgiveness in June 2019. But it took a full, additional year before I was able to get that discharged by the Department of Education—that’s where NEA’s attorneys came in to help me. They combed through every one of my documents and helped me to locate other documents that I hadn’t been able to get very easily.
Eventually, NEA threatened a lawsuit against the Department of Education—which the department wanted to avoid. The Department of Education caved, forgave my loans, and returned the overpayments that I made. At that point, the remaining balance of the loans themselves was about $103,000, and the overpayment was about $8,000.
I feel relieved! How else can I feel? That number—$103,000—that I’d see on the statement, my god, that was like a mortgage itself! I’m so relieved it’s no longer there and I feel like I’m able to start new adventures.
Learn more about how you can combat student debt at NEA.org/StudentDebt
