lol, yeah.. I could work 4 or 5 full time "shelf stocking" jobs - if there were enough hours in a day - while living on ramen and still not make enough to pay off my student loans any time in the next 20+ years. And that's the case for a good number of college grads in the US. That's how the system is designed here, and for the majority of people, if you don't take those loans, or have parents who were smart enough and wealthy enough to save for your college, you'll never do much more than minimum wage, paycheck to paycheck. Sure, some folks get lucky and make a small fortune as a high school drop out, but the majority of people have to have a degree in order to make a real living. We are debt slaves, simple as that. And last year the amount of default student loan debt in the US broke $1-trillion, and it's just been continuing to grow since with no end in sight. Because more college grads today are out of work than in work, because there are NO jobs for grads to fill, so they're working at mcdonalds or wal-mart or not working at all. For a lot of them, they're now over-qualified for the min. wage jobs and no one will hire them.  

Fortunately the majority of my loans are NOT federal loans, they're private, but they still basically have the same rules as federal loans. They can't be discharged. 

And no, the government should not be giving us loans for free. First of all there's no such thing as free, regardless of where the money comes from, someone has to pay for it. I fully accept my debt and I don't expect anyone to have to pay for it but me. I made the mistake of taking the loans to begin with. If I had it to do over again I wouldn't, but live and learn.

Moving to TX and buying a chunk of land and living off the grid is all fine and dandy in fantasy land, but what are you going to do to pay your annual property taxes? Basket weaving isn't going to cut it, and there's no where in this country you can live on "your own land" (which is a fallacy by definition) and not have to pay property taxes. Like I said earlier, you never really own your own place here. Cause as soon as you stop paying those taxes, the feds will take your place. 

Thanks for the info Wolf. I do have CS4 Design Premium. It just doesn't have all the apps I need. The thing is tho, I don't really know graphic design or print media. I mean I can use Photoshop and Illustrator pretty well, but I can't tell you what the specifics are when it comes to print and all that. So if I wanted one of those jobs I'd have to learn graphic design. My degree is in computer animation.