I am currently enrolled at the New York Film Academy taking up a one-year filmmaking course. In fact, I had just emerged from Sundance. I enjoyed skiing there but beyond that, meeting the great Robert Redford was exhilarating. I intentionally never viewed at any of the movies for this year’s Sundance selection though because I first want to expose myself with mainstream movies.

The thing is, my tuition at the New York Film Academy was all financed with two student loans. My name is Francisco and I’m a son of immigrant Mexican parents from Laredo, Texas. Laredo is bustling with immigrants from Mexico because it’s a gateway to the United States. Being their only child, my parents who were both farm laborers in El Paso during my elementary years before ultimately living in Laredo, managed to get me a public high school education. Education was definitely not a problem as high school was free but miscellaneous expenses such as snacks and mingling with my high school friends take the toll of my dad’s coffers.

It was also during this coming-of-age point in my life that I admire films. Latin American actresses such as America Ferrera are not necessarily my type though but I just can foresee the future as a mainstream filmmaker. While checking out MySpace, I chanced into the website of Sallie Mae and the articles on their website have convinced me that I can really succeed being a filmmaker with the help of a college student loan from Sallie Mae. In my later research over the Net, I also encountered that the federal government is likewise providing college loans for students who are really determined to have some form of tertiary education as a starting point for a lifetime career.

So I grab the opportunity and took the examination qualifier so I can get the federal government student loan. They have this exam because slots are limited since the federal government student loan has lesser interest than the ones offered by private providers such as Sallie Mae.

Staying for a year in a tertiary institution is just a quarter of what one endures when taking a professional bachelor’s degree course. Others even last for two more academic semesters such as certain engineering courses. But I believe that what I am studying right now – a two-semester course in filmmaking can already suffice to jumpstart a career.

My studying comes at a very opportune time where the filmmaking industry is in its very dynamic state. The playing field is therefore leveled and every filmmaker has an equitable chance to succeed. Consider at what wrapped up at the box office since the start of this year. It was a vampire movie with a deserted Brooklyn that came out on top during the holidays. By the start of the year, it was an adventure movie with extremely preposterous plots making a joke out of Helen Mirren’s performance. Later, another monster haunting New York became the top grosser. And now, a spoof of 2007 movies is number one at the box office. Now that’s some diversity indeed.

STUDENT loans can easily be forgiven believe me. This is probably one good piece of news for 2008. Student loans are such a hassle especially if you have just graduated and are unemployed. Remember that you are competing with thousands of college graduates in the United States each year and unless you have a truly profitable venture or simply lucky like the founder of Facebook or Google, you will really have a bad headache in thinking on how to pay a loan monthly for the next 30 years even though it only has a low interest rate.

However, there are lots of methods on how to make your loans go away. If you are a teacher in a public elementary or secondary school here in the United States and your education was funded by student loans, then you can make your whole student loan debt go away. This is part of an incentive of being a public school teacher. The United States government has instituted this scheme after the Bush administration has passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 which calls for massive literacy drives across the country targeting impoverished children. A lot of children living in the United States being immigrants or being Hispanics, part of the drive are to teach English to these kids. This noble drive of the United States government calls for noble measures too like forgiving the whole student loan debt of a public school teacher.

Another way to make your whole student loan go away is through enlisting in the military. Whether you’ll enlist yourself off in the Marines or the Air Force or the Navy or the Army, your whole student loan debt will surely be forgiven. The bulk of these Marines and Army personnel usually go to high risk places such as Iraq or Afghanistan, which is why forgiving the whole student loan debt is usually the deal offered by the federal government. Yet even those who are not assigned in high risk places by merely manning Predators at Andrews are still being rewarded the loan forgiveness scheme.

Still another way to forgive your student loan debt either wholly or in part is to do community service and be employed by organizations sanctioned by the federal or local government. Aside from being paid lucratively, not only your loans are forgiven but you are also helping others. By the way, student loans are classified into two kinds – the ones offered by the federal government and the ones offered by private lenders such as Sallie Mae. If you are struggling to go to college, chances are you will be engaged in more than one student loan. So there will be no hassle in processing the loans, college students here usually consolidate their loans. Even the federal or the state governments accept student loan consolidation. And all the student loans consolidated will be forgiven if you fall under the criteria above.