According to TIME student loan debt in this country surpassed its $one trillion mark in 2012. There's even a website where you can watch the ever-growing number go up and up and up. It's like some twisted, sick fascination, seeing the numbers that you and so many others in your position carry on your backs. The image of those numbers and that steady upwards moving graph line is enough to scare anyone away from ever going to college. But it doesn't.

All my life my mom has always told me that the biggest inheritance she could leave me with was my education. What I wouldn’t find out until later is that it would come at a great cost to both her and me. There was always the thought of loans looming up ahead; she always warned me about them. So I worked hard at school. I did my best and somehow that still wasn't enough. Because I also had inherited a dream from her.

This great American meritocratic dream.

From the moment my mom immigrated to the United States from Cuba she knew that she needed to become a professional, start a career, get a college diploma. She went to nursing school and did just that. Then she passed the legacy on to me.

I was told from very early on in my life that this is what I needed to move me forward in life, because there was no other way to make it. I still believe that, and I have no doubt that it's true. I have loved every bit of my college experience, but that doesn't take away from the fact that I'm always stressed out come July.

July is the month in which my financial aid drops in, in which I'm sent an invoice telling me how much I have to pay this semester, and where I'm scrambling to figure out how much my loan is going to be for the year. In DJ Khaled's words, "another one."

The goal is to be realistic and yet to dream big. If I work hard enough I can climb up the ladder and hope that one day it will all pay off. My mother still chases that dream. I've started to chase it for her.

I knew that my choices will come to haunt me later; I just didn't know that they were to involve large sums of money.

The American Dream is something that can be sold. What they don't tell you is that they will not give you the resources to help you pay for it. It seems to be written in the fine print that you have to find your own way to get rid of that debt. But when that debt has been written into every dream, there's no escaping it.

I went to college with the idea that this was it, this was the way up. And yet somehow graduates today are a part of the unemployment bracket.

It's hard to think sometimes that because I wanted a great education and opportunities that could help me move forward in my career that I now have to worry about paying off a debt that will never grow smaller.

Dreams in this country have a price tag: $1,363,820,726,315 and counting.