Student loan, leave me alone

The issue of my student loan has come up, and now I am scrambling to fix an inadvertent slip-up on my part, all while having to navigate through endless phone mazes that only lead to insanity, way on the opposite end from a live human being who can actually help me.

I finally got a hold of a human being at a completely different phone number than the one that I've been given numerous times, and after speaking with the nice man on the other end, I can relax a little bit, although I feel more disturbed than I did before I spoke with someone.

This got me to thinking that I really hate the fact that after being so good about not borrowing any money that needed to be paid back during college, one semester the need arose for such a thing to happen, and here I am, nine years later, still dealing with a measly amount that just will not go away, no matter how hard I try. Education is important and worth every penny, but must we suffer for being good enough to go to school and finish, despite our financial difficulties during that time?

I'm disturbed, because I have to apply for a certain payment plan, and once I apply for it, if I continue with it for 20 years, the loan will be forgiven if I haven't been able to pay my balance off. Okay, that's disturbing, because even when someone files for bankruptcy, they are only in that category for seven years.

This also got me to thinking of a question I'd like to ask lenders...

People who are fiscally irresponsible in every facet of their financial lives declare themselves a legal label as a result, and only have to suffer for seven years? Yet people who go to school with good faith and will to ensure their futures are indebted to you for 20 years? Where is the fairness in that, oh dear lenders? In 20 years, I'll be over 50 and the school I graduated from may not even be around, who knows? But I still owe you until those 20 years are up, that is assuming I won't work something out to feed the hole that is you before then?

Pardon me for sounding crass, but that is absolute bologna, and I can only be thankful that my loan is relatively tiny to what other people owe. God help us all in the face of a greedy system that makes money off people like little ol' me!