When Jessie Suren, 29, started her college education at La Salle University in Philadelphia in 2006, her overall cost of attendance for one semester was $18,300 (including tuition fees, room and board and a meal plan).

Fast forward to her senior year in spring 2010: even though she had lower expenses – she opted out of a meal plan – Suren’s overall cost of attendance went up to $22,000 per semester. Why?

When looking through Suren’s financial documents provided to her by the university, most, if not all, of the increases came from just the price of tuition. It increased every year by about $800 or more. Even though Suren, a straight A high school student, received about $82,000 in grants and scholarships directly from La Salle, it wasn’t enough to cover the $161,000 in overall tuition costs.

Upon graduating, Suren was faced with a bill for $72,000 which has since grown to $90,000 due to high interest rates on the loans.

In a desperate attempt to keep up with her bills, she spent a year working as a student loan debt collector for American Education Services (AES), the same loan servicing company to which she was repaying her loans.

“The six-week intense training taught me everything I needed to know about student loans,” says Suren. “We learned everything – from what it means to go into default to the difference between forbearances and deferments.”

Throughout the year Suren worked at AES she spent a lot of time making painful calls to students and cosigners who were behind on their payments. Since for the first 6 months of her employment her loans were still in a grace period, Suren says this experience helped her see into her future. “It was really sad for me to be the bearer of bad news every single day,” Suren tells Yahoo Finance. “There were even times that I had to call grieving parents of sick or dead children. It was just horrible.”

Suren, who’s been able to keep up with her bills since graduating in 2010, has used this knowledge to help others and has since started a website aimed at answering student loan questions, guidance she wished she had at 18.

Help from parents

Being the first in her immediate family to pursue college, Suren’s mother, Mary Grace Howells, paid $2,000 for her daughter to get help from Complete College Solutions, a company that helps students apply to college and fill out financial aid forms, including the FAFSA.

Suren says it helped her in the application process, but once she was accepted to La Salle, their job was done. “There is no personal guidance from anyone when trying to figure out how to pay for college,” says Suren. “I was always told by everyone to just take out student loans.”

Along with taking out private and federal loans under her own name, Suren’s mother joined the 3.3 million parents who signed their names to a Parent PLUS loan, a federal loan given to parents with good credit. The original amount was $30,000 but since it’s a loan that accrues interest as the student is in school, it has now grown to $45,000 and will continue to grow with an interest rate of 8.5%.

The light at the end of a tunnel came in the form of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF), a program aimed to help PLUS loan borrowers work off their debt. Suren says her mother has been working for the federal government for over 20 years, and since the loan is in her name, Suren automatically qualifies for the PSLF. With this program, any outstanding balance left after making 120 qualifying payments, is forgiven.

The catch is that Howells is due to retire in less than 5 years. Because Suren only began the program in 2013, her mother retiring in 5 years would end her hope of getting any of her loans forgiven. If Howells continued to work for another 10 years, allowing her daughter to complete the 120 qualifying payments, Suren would save thousands of dollars.

College, regardless of cost

Like many, Suren was repeatedly told to follow a path that has become a part of the American dream: Go to school, get good grades, go to college, graduate, get a good job and you’ll be set. At 18, like many young students that don’t have enough foresight to see their future of digging through bills, Suren felt pressure to go to college regardless of the cost, unaware of the broader trend: Since 1995, tuition and fees have risen 179% for private universities and 296% for in-state public schools.

After four years, Suren graduated with a degree in criminal justice, but went on to join the 27% of students who don’t work in the field related to their studies. Because of a hiring freeze at the Department of Justice in 2010, Suren says her dream to become a US Marshal fell through.

Unable to afford to live independently, she rents a small room from her brother’s girlfriend in Pennsylvania. Currently, Suren works as a commission-only sales rep at Sundance Vacations. Although she dreams of one day owning a home and starting a family, those hopes will always come second to her $900 monthly student loan bill.

“I know I should’ve been smarter and gone to a cheaper school,” says Suren, “but at 18, I really had no concept of money.”