I live in a van down by Duke University
December 19, 2009 2:32 PM   Subscribe

I live in a van down by Duke University so that I can attend graduate school at Duke University without taking out loans or accepting money from anyone.

Living in a van was my grand social experiment. I wanted to see if I could -- in an age of rampant consumerism and fiscal irresponsibility -- afford the unaffordable: an education.

I pledged that I wouldn't take out loans. Nor would I accept money from anybody, especially my mother, who, appalled by my experiment, offered to rent me an apartment each time I called home. My heat would be a sleeping bag; my air conditioning, an open window. I'd shower at the gym, eat the bare minimum and find a job to pay tuition. And -- for fear of being caught -- I wouldn't tell anybody.
posted by granted (9 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: There's some low-hanging fruit here riffing off "double" and Chris Farley's weight, but I miss that guy so I'm going to just leave it alone. -- cortex



 
Double
posted by the_bone at 2:35 PM on December 19, 2009


pretty sure this is a double...
posted by weezy at 2:36 PM on December 19, 2009


And it would seem you're not the first person to do so.
posted by orange swan at 2:39 PM on December 19, 2009


How many posts feature the 'livinginvan' tag?
posted by fixedgear at 2:44 PM on December 19, 2009


I live in a van down by Duke University so that I can attend graduate school at Duke University without taking out loans or accepting money from anyone.

Ok, reading along, the guy says he's a graduate student in "liberal studies." Given his statement that he needs to "pay tuition," it sounds like he doesn't have a TA or RA fellowship, at which point you have to wonder why he chose Duke over a university that would give him a fellowship or, at least, state-university tuition.

I get the impression that the bulk of Salon's readership and writing staff is made up of people who dug themselves into debt getting pay-your-own-way graduate degrees.
Here, the average undergraduate student who's taken out loans graduates with more than $23,000 in debt -- about the national average.
You know who else is in this much debt? Anyone who finances a new car. Seriously, graduating from a top-tier college with $23,000 in debt isn't a huge deal. It's the people with debt approaching $100,000 who didn't go to med school or a top-tier law school that are the ones in serious trouble.

That said, I salute this guy for his dedication to reducing expenses. I know a couple of guys who did this for a semester without even the benefit of a van. Both of them just slept on the couches in the lab's common areas and showered in the lab shower-equipped bathrooms. Since it wasn't uncommon for someone to take a nap on one of the couches when they were pulling an all-nighter, no one realized that he was doing this every night.
posted by deanc at 2:46 PM on December 19, 2009 [3 favorites]


That van is double parked.
posted by 445supermag at 2:48 PM on December 19, 2009 [1 favorite]


The van is heated by his sense of self-satisfaction.
posted by box at 2:51 PM on December 19, 2009 [1 favorite]


"I listened to millions of raindrops drum against the roof and watched them wiggle like sperm down my windows."
posted by kylej at 2:58 PM on December 19, 2009


kylej, I also found that to be somewhat ... jarring.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 2:59 PM on December 19, 2009


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