A Guide To Anthropomorphizing Your Student Loan Lender

by Dina Gachman

In 2014, it was announced that student loan behemoth Sallie Mae would split into two malevolent factions, like a giant, scaly, two-headed Hydra. Sweet little Sallie Mae was becoming NAVIENT. Emails started swarming the inboxes of hundreds of thousands of borrowers, telling us not to panic if we noticed that our statements were coming from NAVIENT. Navient would be taking care of us from now on — and they used plenty of exclamation marks to prove it!

In a way, this was comforting. In the six-plus years that I had been paying the piper, the adorable name Sallie Mae always felt like an insult. I longed for them to just call it Student Loan Corp. or Purgatory, Inc. or something. Then they went and morphed into Navient, which sounds like a bloodsucking, space-age sorceress rather than a mild-mannered, square dancing, Tennessee good-time gal, á la Sallie Mae. I don’t love Navient or Sallie Mae, but at least the change made sense.

A rose is a rose, though. I understand that it’s immature and a little ridiculous to call your student loan lender mean names in an effort to make yourself feel better. But you know what? It works. I take full responsibility for my loans and I understand that I need to pay them back. What I don’t understand is why there was no one to explain the “intricacies” of student loans and the dangers of private loans to me or to any of my classmates when we went to school. We tried to get answers, believe me. But boohoo and woe is me.

There are ways to try and fight the ballooning student loan industry, and there are films like Ivory Tower and politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren that are trying to tackle the issue. (Thank you!) In the interim, you can anthropomorphize your student loan lender like I do, and “rebrand” it as a foul, soulless demon puppet in an effort to lift your spirits. I’ve been doing this for so long that I’m basically a pro, so if you need a little inspiration, here are just a few of my go-to names for Sallie Mae/Navient, or whoever your lender may be.

Fanged Goblin

Two-Headed Banshee

Demon Succubus

Mutant Ogre

Mephistopheles

Dark Overlord

Lucifer

Horned Ghoul

Baby Jane Hudson

Harpy Troll

Pinhead

Bat-Shit Maenad

Loki

Buffalo Bill

Clown (any clown will do)

Lilith

Cthulhu

Teddy Ruxpin

Warlock

Lucifer

King Joffrey

Werepanther

Puss-Riddled Gorgon

Regina George

Soul-Crushing Scorpiochs

Beelzebub

Those are just a few favorites from my personal archive to get you started. Like I said, I know it’s immature to call a student loan company mean names, and I also know that doing so will not magically make the loans go away. But it will make you feel better when your next email from Navient pops up, screeching, “Your statement is ready!”

If you blurt out a few of the names listed above, it’ll be easier to pay the succubus and enjoy the rest of your day.

Dina Gachman’s first book, Brokenomics, will be published by Seal Press this spring. She’s on Twitter @TheElf26.

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