screen shot of Resume Goddess's eBay listing, taken on January 5, 2011
At the beginning of January, a Chicago-based eBay seller going by the name of Resume Goddess – she asked us not to publish her real name – put her law degree, from John Marshall Law School, up for auction for $200,000. (eBay quickly took down the listing, and warned Resume Goddess not to put up her law degree listing again.)
Why’d she do it? Resume Goddess owes about $200K for her degree, and makes just under $30K a year. Her student loan payments “would be about $2K per month,” she recently told OOTS News.
OOTS NEWS: So eBay deleted your ad?
RG: Right. And I had 2100 people who had looked at it.
OOTS NEWS: Anybody bid on it yet?
RG: No but I had several questions, mostly from attorneys.
OOTS NEWS: I guess first of all, what’s your story? You went to law school. What did you go to law school for? Did you know what kind of law you wanted to practice?
RG: I wanted to be a public defender.
OOTS NEWS: In Chicago?
RG: Yeah. I had an internship.
OOTS NEWS: What had you done before law school?
RG: I was a consultant. An IT security consultant.
OOTS NEWS: You just thought it would be more rewarding to practice law?
RG: I thought well, I’m going to go and help people and I’m going to stop this crazy drug war or whatever. Grand ideas, right? So I thought of law school and then I actually got an unpaid internship with the public defender’s office. I saw how really sad that whole thing is.
OOTS NEWS: You must have seen some interesting cases though.
RG: Sure oh yeah. It was all very sad. I had grand illusions, right? I did not pass the bar.
OOTS NEWS: And so what did you do after that?
RG: I worked jobs here and there. It took me about five years applying for jobs, and after five years I actually got a job and I’m still there.
OOTS NEWS: What kind of job is it?
RG: I work for a lawyer. I’m a legal secretary.
OOTS NEWS: Okay. So did you take the bar again?
RG: No I did not.
OOTS NEWS: Okay.
RG: You know because then I would have to take BarBri which would cost a lot. Like one thousand dollars, and take time off work. I couldn’t do it.
OOTS NEWS: Right.
RG: The reason why I did this ad was because [of] private student loans. Of course I can’t pay what they’re wanting, that’s more than I bring home but I pay what I can and they are unwilling to negotiate anything. And so yeah that’s the real issue and I’m finding that more and more people are struggling with that because the private loan people, they will not work with you. But the government – the government loans – they’ll work with you. The problem is there is no consumer protection.
OOTS NEWS: What would you like them to do like ideally?
RG: I want to see an income based repayment plan like the government does, the federal student loans. I mean who knows down the line, maybe I’ll have a really great job and I can start paying again but right now I have no choice. I can send them what I can, you know, but then I’m going to go into default anyway because there’s nothing I can do. I can’t work harder than I do and there’s no way I’m going to get any more money with the economy the way it is.
OOTS NEWS: Right. Right. And so have you given up on being a lawyer? Do you wish that you had never gone to law school?
RG: Absolutely and absolutely. Absolutely. I regret going to law school. I regret it absolutely one hundred percent. It has done nothing for me, absolutely nothing. There’s so many people in the same boat that I’m in and I don’t know, it just seems like…it’s a lost cause and a lot of people are going to suffer, especially people younger than me.
I’m older, right, I was an older student so in some ways it’s better and some ways it’s not better because I don’t have the luxury of living with my parents, right? I’m fifty. But these people getting out of school and they’re studying with these loans, I don’t know how they are going to make it. I feel sorry for them.
OOTS NEWS: Yeah. It’s hard to see how they’re going to make it. The cost of going to law school is so high. It is really hard to see how they’re going to make it.
RG: Yeah, I worry for them. Something will have to change or we’re going to have a whole generation of kids that are just unable to contribute to our economy.
There’s actually a letter getting from the student loan people. Let me see if I can find it. I can read it to you.
OOTS NEWS: Sure.
RG: “Thank you for contacting us with regards to your student loan account. The letter is in response to your recent correspondence. We appreciate your current circumstances however, we are unable to lower your monthly payment, as it was set up based on your loan’s terms. We also appreciate the payments that you are able to send, but keep in mind unless the monthly payment is not satisfied, the due date will not advance.” I’m not sure what that means but they’re telling me that they cannot work with me basically.
OOTS NEWS: I mean it seems like our next big crisis is going to be a student loan crisis. There’s got to be nasty defaulting on student loans.
RG: It’s on the brink. The thing with houses though, you can have your house foreclosed on and then the asset goes to your bank, help pay down that. These students loans, you default, you know, you still owe it.
OOTS NEWS: Right. They can’t foreclose on your law degree.
RG: They could take away your license if you have one. Which can kind of be counterproductive for them. But in any case, yeah it’s a really terrifying situation. I’ve had mostly good responses from people, saying you know, I’m in the same boat, this is really cool, what a great idea. But then I had one response from a woman [about] how she had a law degree and how I pissed her off and how she works eighteen hours a day to make sure she pays her debts and she works through the weekend, she does this and she does that and she probably helps orphans in China or whatever.
But I’m like, well, good for you, you can work eighteen hour days but you know, I’m glad that you love work so much so you don’t want to have a life. But sometimes you know, you’ve got to go grocery shopping and you’ve got to eat, you have to sleep sometime. I understand people like that get you know, well I’m doing this so everybody else should be able to do this.
OOTS NEWS: Are you going to put your law degree back up on eBay?
RG: They told me not to repost it.
OOTS NEWS: Yeah so I guess that’s that. Thanks, eBay.
RG: Yep. That’s it.
