Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Annie, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

Last week, President Biden announced his student debt forgiveness plan. This plan included forgiving up to $20,000 in student debt for working- and middle-class individuals. This is big news for many of us, as current or graduated college students. As someone with about $23,000 in student debt, it certainly caught my attention. This weekend’s recs will help answer your questions about Biden’s plan and how it might play out.

If you have 1 minute…and want a visual aid for the massive amount of student debt currently affecting people in the U.S., check out the U.S. National Debt Clock. It’s both an illuminating visual and a (somewhat) stressful experience.

If you have 5 minutes…and have some questions about your eligibility, read this NPR student debt forgiveness Q&A article.

If you have 10 minutes…and are from out-of-state, read this article in TIME. Residents of states such as Massachusetts and North Carolina (among others) may have their forgiven student debt taxed.

Photo by Alice Pasqual on Unsplash

If you have 15 minutes…and want to hear an economist’s perspective on the plan, read this article from the New York Times. The main takeaway is that although the plan is not perfect, it has great potential to help working- and middle-class individuals and families.

If you have another 15 minutes…and are concerned how this debt will affect taxpayers, read this ABC10 article. Spoiler: as of right now, taxpayers should be in the clear, but there is a possibility this could change if current tax codes get revised.

If you have 2 hours…and want to turn off your brain for a little, watch the first 3 episodes of She Hulk: Attorney at Law on Disney+. Tatiana Maslany is an absolute treasure, and her character Jennifer Walters is, like many of us, working to pay off her student loans.

Annie Stockmal is a graduate student in the Communication Department and graduate assistant in Falvey Library.