What should a dropout in debt do?

I realize I didn't sufficiently emphasize what I feel is the most important bit of advice I could give: Figure out how to see a doctor and get treated for your depression and/or ADD. One way or another. Make that your priority. Everything is going to feel like a thousand-times worse problem, an impossible trial, without that. (And keep in mind that SSRIs usually take about 3 weeks to change your mood.)

This post has some excellent responses. I agree with jalexei most, though, it's especially important to show the willingness to pay back the roomie's parents. 5K sounds like a lot, but the 2K to the school is what they call 'uncollectable'. The college may holler, but they are better off waiting for you to pay them than sending the debt to collection. It's where I'd start. Visit them, apologize for the mess, indicate your intent to pay it, but advise them you're temporarily unable to do so. If they send it to collection, a collection agency will get 1/3, and that will be many, many years down the road. However, if you DO get a call from a collection agency, all you hve to do is tell them not to call any more, and they are legally required to immediately stop contacting you. Don't skip town. Do tell the roomie's parents, in person, that their debt is safe, but you need several months to start repaying it. Then, as jalexei suggests, be the best damn employee Wal-mart has and do your best to get back on your feet. It sounds like depression may have gotten you into this mess and not vice versa, so I would also suggest doing whatever you can to get treatment and learning what works to get out of it. Exercise is good and cheap and effective. You are young and there is plenty of time to get this fixed. Lots of folks go through it. Don't despair, just do the best you can. It is not lethal, just uncomfortable, inconvenient, and humbling. Once you're successfully through this rough period, you'll know what you're made of and have new skills for the next phase of life. Good luck!

"I've more or less lost my social network" and the inability to hold down a job are huge. What's the deal here?

You certainly sound like a textbook case of depression and I hope you get some help with it. I also hope you take everyone else's advice here and learn to take a deep breath and let some things go. There have been times in my life I'd have killed to have the level of debt & career problem you have, but I can look back on them now and see that from here they don't look as insurmountable as they did then. You do need to look at this self-destructive behavior and deal with it, though, since it may be something that persists even after you deal with your depression. You should learn to look at some bigger picture beyond pride or whatever motivation led to this: but found I screwed up too often and walked out when I was at the point where I would have been fired in a couple of days (was told so by several people, including my supervisor). If you're ever again in a remotely similar situation, get fired. It's hard on the ego but you get to collect unemployment. Since you're paying for unemployment insurance whether you like it or not, don't shoot yourself in the foot by denying it to yourself. Your supervisor told you because they company is delighted when you quit rather than get fired - it gets them off the hook. Good luck.

Some followup: - I feel part of my inability to hold down a job may be due to having a form of ADD. I have a hard time focusing and concentrating on something, even when I know I should be and have the desire to do so. The job I worked for three years involved constant variation, and it was only when I was promoted from that position to a more repetitive position that I showed performance problems. It's not that I really despise Wal-Mart, per se--it's a job, even if it's a low-paying part-time job--but I fear my inability to focus and "get things right" (the other day I had a register $20 short) will come back to haunt me. - I'm a surprisingly well interviewee and wound up shooting my foot a lot over the six month period I was looking for employment by saying I was never promoted to the second position I held at my first employer and left voluntarily (as that was the original plan.) Thus, I interviewed for a lot of better jobs that I would have had had I not done that. - Family situation: mother is an only child who is in a retirement home, father is incarcerated and as a result his extended family is quite hostile towards me. - Schooling: I didn't take out loans for a simple reason: bizzare financial circumstances forced me to file my tax papers several times to Direct Loan Servicing and the like, and I didn't become eligible for my Perkins until after I left (I actually have only $20 something left on my Stafford, so I'm not concerned about it.) I've tried since to enroll at other colleges--the problem is that they require my transcript (I have about twelve hours at KU, despite not accrueing any of them there--I dropped out about a month and a half into the semester) and KU has a hold on my transcript until I pay off the money. - Social network: Combined with the depression and lack of monetary funds (a lot of my friends are based in Topeka, about 30 minutes away,) I slowly lost contact with people who I previously held close.

This might seem out of the blue, but just in case: Quit smoking pot. Quit drinking. Sorry if that's not the case here, but I lived with fuck-up roomates, the ones who could never hold down a job, never quite make it to class, always getting fired / locked out / car wouldn't start / whatever the excuse this time. It always always ALWAYS came down to them being potheads. Loss of social network? Check. Job troubles? Check. I remember how romantic it seemed at the time to spiral ever-downward in a Tom Waits / Sid Vicious / Dylan Thomas kind of way. But it looks pretty stupid in the rear-view mirror. And if this is completely irrelevant, my apologies.

Regarding the college debt issue, you might find that even big universities are willing to cut you some slack in cases like this. A roommate I had was in a very similar situation - she needed a job to make up the remainder of her tuition that wasn't covered by scholarships and loans, and partway through the academic year she lost the job. She already owed money for the current semester with bills for the next semester coming up, and she was understandably freaked out. But she went to her advisor and explained the situation, and her advisor in turn spoke to the financial aid people, who simply tacked on a little more to her need-based aid package. I was astonished that my school (which has a reputation for being somewhat money-grubbing) was willing to give a student more aid just because she asked for it, but that's exactly what they did. Maybe you've already tried this, but if you haven't, it's definitely worth at least finding out if they're willing to help.

See your college's financial aid officer. Find out if they can help you apply for bursaries, loans or emergency assistance. Then go see your housing office. Contact all your creditors. Work out a repayment plan. If you can only afford to send $25 a month, let them know and make the payments regularly. Tell your roommate's parents that you are serious about repaying them -- show it by making the repayments -- and ask if there is any way you could repay part of it through your labour. Maybe they need some documents typed, a ditch dug, walls painted, etc. Concentrate on your job performance. Ask your supervisor for feedback and try to improve on weak points. If customers say you do a good job, offer them a pre-filled-out feedback form, if that's in keeping with the culture at your workplace. $5k feels like a lot of debt because you're depressed. It's really not a lot of debt for a college student. But your emotional state is skewing everything. Go see your college's counselling department. They can probably direct you to someone who offers free counselling, if you can't get this from the university itself.

In response to a related question, http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/26565#420109 What resources do you have? Can you move back to Topeka? Otherwise get those people back in your life? Are you so positive you can't turn to your parents, or is that maybe the depression talking? If you took the student loans, and went back to school, would you be covered under the school's health services, and would that cover mental health treatment? Is there any kind of free clinic in your city? Your performance problems only showing up when you switched from a job with variation to a job with repetition does sound ADD-ish. Try reading Thom Hartmann's ADD: A Different Perspective. (Naturally, AskMe can't diagnose.) If you can see a doctor, talk to him/her about it. (Surprisingly to me, taking methylphenidate for ADD also had an anti-depressant effect on me.) Like others have said, $5K isn't necessarily that much debt compared to the salary you might be making with a degree. After finishing college with lots of loans, and buying a cheap car, I was $35K in debt. It seemed insurmountable at the time. It was gone in about 8 years, and I really didn't suffer for the payments.