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Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom, by Ken Ilgunas
Ebook Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom, by Ken Ilgunas
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The story of a student who went to extraordinary lengths - including living in a van on a campus parking lot - to complete his education without sacrificing his financial future. In a frank and self-deprecating voice, memoirist Ken Ilgunas writes about the existential terror of graduating from college with $32,000 in student debt. Inspired by Thoreau, Ilgunas set himself a mission: get out of debt as soon as humanly possible. To that end, he undertook an extraordinary 3-year transcontinental journey, driving to Alaska and taking a series of low-paying jobs. Debt-free, Ilgunas then enrolled himself in a master's program at Duke University, using the last of his savings to buy himself a used Econoline, his new "dorm." The van, stationed in a campus parking lot, would be an adventure, a challenge, a test of his limits. It would be, in short, his "Walden on Wheels."Ilgunas went public in a widely read Salon article that spoke to the urgent student debt situation in America today. He offers a funny and pointed perspective on the dilemma faced by those who seek an education but who also want to, as Thoreau wrote, "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."
- Sales Rank: #17298 in Audible
- Published on: 2013-05-14
- Released on: 2013-05-14
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Running time: 584 minutes
Most helpful customer reviews
140 of 147 people found the following review helpful.
No, it's NOT a creepy van.
By Theoden Humphrey
"He was many things -- a surveyor, a naturalist, a handyman, a pencil-maker -- but I thought of Thoreau as a writer more than anything else. And his greatest story wasn't one of his essays, or 'Walden.' His greatest story, I thought, was his life. He knew that anything is possible when you wield the pen and claim your life as your own. . . . [F]or those of us who can, should it not be our great privilege to live the lives we've imagined? To be who we want to be? To go on our own great journeys and share our experiences with others?"
It's interesting that Ken Ilgunas describes himself, repeatedly, as a slacker: apathetic and indolent throughout his high school and undergraduate career, he finished college with a degree he didn't particularly care for (though he had found some inspiration in the last year or so of college, some thirst for knowledge, some interest in writing) and $32,000 in debt. But a slacker would never have done what Ilgunas did: he found work during a recession and despite the enormous surfeit of college graduates with degrees but little passion, he worked at crappy jobs in ugly circumstances, worked extra hours (60, 70, 80 a week) as much as possible, he saved every penny he could, he bought almost nothing for himself -- and he paid off his debt. And then, he went back to school. But to ensure that he did not go back into debt -- a promise he had made to himself while chipping away at the mountain of his first batch of student loans -- he chose to live in a van.
Ilgunas calling himself a slacker reminds me of a favorite quote from Lech Walesa, the Polish union organizer who brought his country from communism to democracy in the 1970's and 1980's: "I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things." And just like Walesa, who couldn't rationally be considered lazy, Ken Ilgunas cannot rationally be considered a slacker.
What both of these men are -- and, arguably, Henry David Thoreau before them, who served as Ilgunas's primary inspiration for his simplified life -- is dedicated. Because Ilgunas is dedicated, focused only on what was really important, he didn't spend time or effort, or money, on things that were unnecessary -- and Ilgunas has a very definite and narrow idea of what was necessary. It was only one thing: freedom. To achieve that, first he had to escape his suburban boredom, which he did by going to Alaska, and visiting one of the last truly wild places left in America; and then he had to escape his debt. Then he had to go back to school, where he discovered a new purpose -- and the answer to that new purpose was this book.
Mr. Ilgunas succeeded in this last purpose as well. Because he has inspired me, and, I have no doubt, many others, too.
It's a good story. It's an Everyman's memoir, though Ilgunas does what most of us never bring ourselves to do, to our own loss. I thought it would focus more on the actual vandwelling that features so prominently on the cover, but the first two-thirds of the book is not: it tells the story of his war with his debt. It's a good story, and a necessary one to understand the vandwelling. It's an especially good story for people today to read. I'm glad I did. I will be sharing this book with my college-bound students (I teach high school) and I will go on my own great journey, and I will share my experience with others. Yeah. I'll go for it.
87 of 92 people found the following review helpful.
Wow - Incredible Story!
By Loyd Eskildson
Author Ken Kilgunas graduated from the University at Buffalo owing $32,000 and with a degree in history and English. (Fortunately, he'd limited his debt by working over 30 hours/week at a Home Depot - $8/hour.) Unable to find work, he ended up taking a $9/hour job and tour guide and cook at a Coldfoot truck stop about 174 miles into the mostly gravel Dalton Highway and 60 miels north of the Arctic Circle, mostly used by truckers en route to Prudhoe Bay from Fairbanks.(He notes in 2009 there were 17.4 million college graduates in jobs not requiring a degree, including 365,000 cashiers and over 100,000 janitors - 5,057 with doctorate or professional degrees.) Clothes came from donation bins, friends cut his hair. The 'good news' is that the nearest store was in Fairbanks (no temptation to spend money), there was no cellphone reception (no temptation to sign onto a phone plan), and he got free room and board. One year later, he'd paid off $18,000. A year later he got a better-paying seasonal job as a back country ranger with the Park Service at the Gates of the Arctic National Park, and after 2.5 years, was debt free.
In Alaska, Kilgunas also learned about subsistence living and worked with a 74-year-old maintenance man living in his 1980 Chevy Suburban. Wanting to continue his education, he applied to and was accepted at Duke. Living quarters would be a 1994 Ford Econoline van he bought for $1,500 (complete with bald tires) - for two years! Internet and electricity - available at the library. Showers, via a cheap campus gym membership. The bathroom was a quarter-mile from his parking space. Food - he cooked himself in the van, averaging $4.34/day, much cheaper than Duke's cheapest on-campus meal plan $15/day. Their cheapest dorm rooms cost 18X what he paid for his parking permit. Other expenses were covered by tutoring and becoming a test subject.
It's a shame that college costs have reached such levels that Ken had to take such actions, though obviously a great credit to him that he did it. The bad news is that he left Duke with no job and a another degree not likely to bring in a good income. Hopefully his education in living, combined with writing talent, will do what the college educations alone could not - allow Ken to live his dream. Since then he's hiked the length of the controversial Keystone Pipeline - total cost of $6,983, $5,220 of that for gear.
71 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
A young writer not afraid to soar
By Abbot of Acorn Abbey
Ken Ilgunas' book gives me some hope for the future. Ken's story proves that the American suburbs and the American education system can still -- at least on rare occasions -- produce a genuine, thinking, feeling, conscious, self-directed human being.
What does it take to do that? A fertile and rebellious young mind with a hunger for books and genuine experience, plus exposure to the writings of the best minds of the past: In other words, a liberal arts education.
Young though he may be, Ken is a natural-born philosopher, just as he is a natural-born writer. Though he makes much of his slacker, frat-boy origins, no doubt that is part of a writerly device to keep his feet on the ground, even when the wind is in his wings. Slacker frat-boys don't get to speak at Duke graduations, nor are they capable of conceiving, or finding words for, Ken's powerful appeal for the liberals arts, which brought tears to my eyes in an era in which universities are spending borrowed money to build yet more business schools.
I want to take issue with a couple of reviews that have attempted to police and scold Ilgunas for occasionally being politically incorrect. One review lifts out of context a passage in which Ilgunas expresses thoughts of aggression toward a homeless guy who had duped him. I must police and scold such careless reviewers, who lack the insight to realize that Ilgunas really was expressing anger at himself, and questioning his own self-worth, because it was a low point in his journey. Of course Ilgunas is occasionally politically incorrect. He is a truth-seeker and a truth-teller, with no time for frauds and scams.
I eagerly await Ilgunas' future writings. For better or for worse, he is never going to be able to live the way other people live. He is a heretic, so he is doomed to re-imagine how one might live, and how one might think, in times like the times we live in. It was largely Thoreau, it seems, who helped Ilgunas climb to the peak upon which he now stands. But I have to imagine that Ilgunas is looking up toward the next level of the climb, trying to figure out what obstacles the modern world is going to throw in his way, and what insights and philosophical tools it's going to take to go higher.
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