-Marissa, San Francisco, CA

You’re not alone. With everything that a goes along with college–the classes, the exams, the post-college job hunt–many students fail to pay attention to their loans until their caps have been thrown and the diploma is in their hands.

To get a handle on how much you borrowed and from where you borrowed, you’ll want to visit the National Student Loan Data System, which you mentioned in your question. NSLDS is the definitive resource for finding out about your federal loans. “The only caveat is if the school is a Direct Loan school they might not have finished reconciling their records with NSLDS,” warns FindAid.org’s Mark Kantrowitz. This could be the explanation for the complications you’re experiencing now. Private loans are another matter. You’ll need to get a list of the private lenders you borrowed from and call each to determine the loan amounts.

Once you’ve determined what portion of your loans are private and which are federal, it’s time to start looking at your options for repayment. If you’re doing any postdoctoral internships or residencies, income-based repayment may not be your best choice. “With that much debt and some private, she might need more repayment relief during the residency and internship than income-based repayment can provide,” advises Kantrowitz. Other options may include an economic hardship deferment or forbearance. FinAid’s Economic Hardship Deferment Calculator can help you determine if you’re eligible for deferment. To find out if you’re eligible for forbearance, you’ll need to check with your lender.

If you do decide to go the income-based repayment route, it may be best for you to consolidate your loans before you move forward. “With consolidation she’ll have one federal and one private loan instead of multiple opportunities to miss a payment,” says Kantrowitz. It’s important to note that your federal and private loans cannot be consolidated together, and only federal loans are eligible for income-based repayment.

Early in my senior year, I diligently devoted my attention to college applications. I applied to NYU Early Decision and couldn’t fathom any alternatives. I love New York City and knew I’d always end up there. I love that NYU is practically an international institution and day dreamed about meeting people from foreign countries. Perhaps a friend would whisk me to Brunei on Winter break. Or maybe one of my NYU film buddies would land a spot in Sundance and ask me to accompany him. I felt like anything could happen at NYU. I felt like there was no opportunity for mundane monotony and my life would finally begin. While my indecisive sister applied to 18 colleges in her senior year, I applied to just four (two of which were SUNYs that I applied to as a fallback due to the competitive nature of NYU).

My dad reminded me how challenging it is to get into NYU and urged me to be realistic. On a daily basis, he recited statistics that made my goal seem unattainable. In high school, I was not at the top of my class and I wasn’t the most dedicated student. Nevertheless, I finished high school with a solid GPA and excellent SAT scores. But my dad was convinced that NYU, one of the most competitive schools of the nation, wouldn’t be impressed. He often said, “Stop fooling yourself; they turn down Valedictorians at NYU!” When I did get in, he was floored. I was elated. The next day, I came into school with my NYU sweatshirt on and an ear-to-ear smile firmly in place. I had never known any greater pleasure.

It wasn’t until some time later that the hard part came. From the moment my acceptance letter arrived, my dad broke into a persistent sweat. Though he was, of course, proud of my accomplishment, he was incredibly stressed about NYU’s exorbitant price tag. One of the most costly universities in the nation, NYU’s 2009 price tag for a full-time student is in excess of $53,000 a year. This is the price of tuition and room and board before I ever spend a dime on a slice of pizza or any of the other expenses that come about from living in an expensive city.

So, although I didn’t want to hear anything about it, my parents began to investigate financing for college. You see, there is a condition to the otherwise binding Early Decision Agreement. If the applicant seeks financial aid and is displeased with the package, she is no longer obligated to accept the offer for admission. In my case, NYU offered me a scholarship of $5,000 and an unsubsidized Stafford loan of $5,000 for freshman year at an interest rate of 6.8%. An Unsubsidized Stafford Loan is a federally guaranteed loan that is not based on financial need. Interest will accrue from the time the loan is disbursed to the school. I don’t have to make interest or principal payments until six months after graduation, or six months after I drop below a half time status.

The scholarship wouldn’t have to be paid back but the student loan would need to be paid back. So, I would still be responsible for $48,000 per year of tuition in just my freshman year. College costs go up every year. If I assume that tuition and room and board for four years will cost at least $200,000 and my college fund has $80,000, I will need to take loans of at least $120,000 over the four years.

What I wanted to do was to forget everything and just go to NYU. But I couldn’t. I had to run the numbers. As I figure it, this level of debt outweighs any appeal NYU has for me. What would I do once I had used up the $80,000 in my college fund? I would take out low interest student loans. So, I would need to take on over $120,000 of debt, with no money for graduate school (which I plan to attend for journalism). If I have $120,000 of student loans (Stafford loans, PLUS loans, private loans) at an average 8.0% interest rate (and it would probably be higher), it would take me 20 years to pay it off if I paid a bit more than $1,000 per month. That’s too intense for me.

Personally, I freaked out a little bit. I didn’t want to start my life in a hole. As much as I love the idea of NYU, that debt scares me even more. It is, however, avoidable, so I decided to avoid it.

After much deliberation, I have [grudgingly] decided to attend SUNY Geneseo in the fall. It is one of the best SUNY schools and is often referred to as “public ivy,” meaning it is of private school caliber at a public, state school price. I won’t sacrifice anything on the education front, but that was never the issue. This decision makes logical sense. SUNY Geneseo asks for less than $16,000 in annual tuition – including room and board. I can even spend a semester studying abroad at SUNY Geneseo prices. At SUNY Geneseo, that $80,000 in my college fund will cover all four years of my education and I will graduate debt-free.

Having to deal with this sort of personal dilemma is a uniquely senior year experience. We all saw senior year coming, but few of us knew just what that meant. As juniors, we took our SATs and sat through our AP exams and visited various institutions of higher learning and we all thought it was real. It was real, until senior year came and we weren’t just visiting schools but we were sending in deposits. We are now actually paying for our caps and gowns and actually buying shoe bins for college and actually living with the daunting prospect of being on our own and making new friends.

At first, I felt like I was forfeiting my happiness, which I had convinced myself only existed at NYU. I didn’t know if the city girl inside of me could survive the rural life of Geneseo. As bad as it sounds, I was scared that I’d start chewing wheat, sitting on my porch for hours on end, and go cow-tipping on the weekend. But when I visited the school, I realized that it doesn’t have to be like that. There were some really great and interesting people I met when I visited as an accepted student. I’m looking forward to orientation and meeting more new people.

Happiness doesn’t solely exist for me at NYU, though for a while I thought it did. I keep telling myself that life at Geneseo will be great, I’ll meet interesting people, I’ll strive in my classes, and I will be happy. But these are the thoughts and prayers of every graduating senior and perfectly normal. Happiness doesn’t depend on locale, but rather it is a matter of mindset. With the appropriate attitude, happiness will follow me wherever I go, especially to SUNY Geneseo.

We’ll start to see the benefits of the Act, which provides an additional $20 billion in federal aid for students, on July 1. Here are just a few of the major perks:

* Income-based repayment programs. These repayment plans will cap borrower’s monthly loan payments at 15 percent of their discretionary income. If you currently pay more than that – or you will once you start repaying your loans – you’ll be eligible for this repayment plan. After 25 years in the program, your debts will be forgiven.

* Lower interest rates. Rates on need-based loans will continue to drop on July 1, from six percent to 5.6 percent. But they’re not stopping there - this is just the second of four cuts. In 2011, rates will reach 3.4 percent. Compare that with the interest rate on private loans, which often clock in at upwards of 10 percent.

*More Pell Grants. Low and moderate-income students may be eligible for up to $5,350 in Pell Grant scholarships for the 2009 – 2010 school year. That’s about $600 more than last year’s maximum grant, and it’s money you don’t have to pay back.

* Planning to become a teacher? You’re in luck. The Act provides tuition assistance of $4,000 a year (up to $16,000) to students who agree to teach in high-need subject areas in high-need schools upon graduation. You’ll need to commit to stay for four years.

* A bit of old news: Dating back to October, 2007, graduates who commit to enter public service fields – think public defenders or prosecutors, teachers, firefighters, nurses – are eligible to have their loans forgiven after 10 years of working in the field and repaying their loans.

The play is not the thing, he said, daring to disagree with Hamlet. It is not about the two or three nights in front of an audience for applause.  It is about, as he put it in his enviable British accent,  “the pro-cess” of a group of kids becoming a company of actors who cooperate to build a show.  It is about the time spent tableu-ing scenes, discussing their meaning, researching the time period, and of course learning songs and lines and steps.   That is why, he said, the few kids who drop out after getting smaller parts than they (or their parents) felt they deserved inevitably come back and see the show and wish they’d stuck with it.  Those kids see that they missed a journey.  It’s the journey — the pro-cess — that makes them happier than even the end result.

It’s very much what the excellent Judith Warner blogged about in today’s Domestic Disturbances column for The New York Times website.

For me, I realized in that moment, happiness is inextricably bound up in striving. In straining for achievement, of whatever kind. In having a challenge and making it to the other side.

It doesn’t much matter what the challenge or object of achievement is. If none is obvious, one always presents itself.

…. Thursday was the book. Friday was the chicken. Saturday morning dawned with the thought that it was perhaps a good time to lose 10 pounds. On Sunday, I was plagued by the certainty that I’d never get that done, and on Monday I met with my editor and learned that I had to rewrite the book’s first 149 pages. And I was saved. Lifted out of darkness, I was on the road to happiness once again.

So what does all of this have to do with money?  I’m getting there.

If you’ve been reading my posts on my new book The Difference you know happiness — optimism — are proven to be linked to wealth and success.  You don’t want to be blissed out, but rating an 8 out of 10 on a happiness scale (where 1 is misery and 10 elation) serves you well in finance, health and life overall.  And one of the things that can help you get happier is involving yourself in the process of setting goals — big and small — for your life and then making progress toward them.  You don’t have to reach the end of the line to get the happiness charge, just taking steps toward those lines whereever they happen to be does the trick.

Even when the goals are financial.  Even in this environment.  After about 3 months of actively NOT looking at the balances in my kids 529 accounts, I took a deep breath yesterday and took a peek.   Did I have losses?  Sure, these days not having some would have been near miraculous.  But they weren’t as bad as I anticipated, and the fact that I’ve continued to contribute during these down months — buying more shares at cheaper prices — insured that my balances were higher than the last time I checked.  I felt like I was making progress toward the pro-cess of paying for college.

Did that make me happy?  You bet it did.