11 years, 3 degrees and 140K debt later.....

I finally finish my college education with three degrees and a new title of Dr. I get to throw around in attempts to impress anyone but an M.D. My personal experience with the pursuit of higher education has definitely helped me achieve tremendous heights. My student loan debt alone is just at $140,000 which I'm sure supersedes even a large family's total outstanding debt. Throw in my credit cards and car loan and it reaches nearly $200K. And I'm not even a home owner. Now lets look at the lows:

Job: Post-doctoral research fellow with a starting salary of $30K

Credit Score: Too scared to check but do know it is at an all time low. For some reason I never had trouble making the minimum payments on all my cards to maintain a decent score until the last two months.

I'm almost convinced my attempt to put myself in a position to make a difference in people's lives was not worth the burden or stress it has placed on myself. Now I first have to handle the consequences of my irresponsible behavior as a young adult when it came to financial decisions before even thinking about helping others.

I take full responsibility for my current financial situation. However I was allowed to borrow up to $10K a year and easily obtain private student loans as well. When I chose to borrow the maximum amount possible every semester even when I really didn't need to I believed my degrees would have placed me on the job market with a much higher salary. And ever since starting my Ph.D program I've been forced to live a lot more off my credit cards since my graduate assistant stipend and student loans combined barely covered rent, food and utilities.

Now I'm forced to cry out for help and face the humility of cyber begging. But it isn't nearly as humiliating as looking at my current situation and coming to the realization that I'm going to be living in poverty as a Ph.D. And I ain't to proud to beg.

Please help. Even the smallest of donations can help me from at least having an overdrawn checking account. My goal is enough to just get me out of credit card debt. I'll be allowed to at least defer my student loan payments while working as a post-doc if I need to. Plus I qualify for possible NIH funding that would cover up to $35,000 a year. However with an acceptance rate of roughly 30% and funding cycle of just once a year this would not be of any benefit until July 2012 since I missed the deadline to applications getting funded July 2011.

I pledge to follow a career path devoted to the well being of others whether it's by educating them or advancing public health research. My reason for even obtaining a Ph.D. in a public health field was to help those facing health disparities in low-income communities. Primarily HIV and cancer populations. But first I must help get help for myself.