When I graduated from the University of Oregon in 2017, I wasn’t overwhelmed with pride. I was overwhelmed with relief. I felt like I was getting away with something, waiting to be caught.

I had done what, four years before, I feared was impossible. As a low-income, first-generation college student paying my own way through school, I finished school debt-free—something that is nearly impossible today for any undergraduate student in similar circumstances.

Sometimes,...

When I graduated from the University of Oregon in 2017, I wasn’t overwhelmed with pride. I was overwhelmed with relief. I felt like I was getting away with something, waiting to be caught.

I had done what, four years before, I feared was impossible. As a low-income, first-generation college student paying my own way through school, I finished school debt-free—something that is nearly impossible today for any undergraduate student in similar circumstances.

Sometimes, when I encounter other students who managed to get their college degree debt-free, I hear echoes of the American bootstrap mythology in their retelling. I often wondered why I didn’t share their perspective, why I didn’t come away from my experience saying, “It was grueling work but I did it, and I learned that nothing is impossible if you want it badly enough and work hard enough.”

I left my graduation with a different attitude: I thought the system was broken.

Student loan borrowers in America owe a collective $1.6 trillion, tuition growth has outpaced inflation over the past several decades, and according to a Pew Research Center report more poor students than ever have been enrolling in colleges in the U.S. in recent years.

More and more U.S. college students will find themselves on the tightrope I walked in college, a thin wire of hard work and pure chance keeping them from falling into insurmountable debt. For me, had any one thing been different—if I hadn’t gotten the aid I received, if I had gone to a different high school, if I had other family responsibilities, if I hadn’t been able to get a job—I would have been one of those graduates suffocating under unmanageable debt.

Where I started

By the time I started receiving college acceptance letters, I knew I would have to pay my own way through school. To keep my costs low, I chose an in-state public school, the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and enrolled in its honors college. As an honors-college student, I also paid an additional $1,000 of tuition each term, and I lived in a dorm with a meal plan for my first year. In all, my first quarter as a college student cost $9,870 (and 25 cents, if you’re counting).

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I received several scholarships along with grants and other financial aid for low-income students, including the Federal Pell Grant and the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant. I also took out thousands of dollars in federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans.

But I lost one of my scholarships about a week after classes began. The scholarship, for $20,000 over four years, was a merit scholarship reserved for middle-income students. My mother and stepfather split up the summer before my freshman year, and without his job as part of our household income, I dropped into the low-income bracket.

The school sent a letter to my dorm mailbox saying that because my family’s income no longer qualified for the scholarship, I wouldn’t receive the funds I had earned.

To make up the difference, I got some additional aid, including another federal loan reserved for students “with exceptional financial need.” That wasn’t enough, so I borrowed $600 from a boyfriend, put an additional $600 on a credit card, and started working 25 hours a week. I switched to the least expensive meal plan, and after Christmas break I moved into the cheapest dorm room available.

Losing the scholarship––through no fault of my own––rattled me. It brought on a dread that never went away, that I never managed to shake off.

The next four years

If I had relied solely on the financial aid I received as a low-income student, I would still be tens of thousands of dollars in debt today. Those grants came nowhere close to covering the cost of attendance, especially after I lost a major source of funding within my first month on campus. Here’s what I did:

I cut costs. I dropped my plans to double-major in Spanish, and resolved to take the bare minimum number of courses required to graduate. After my freshman year, I applied to (and received) additional merit scholarships each year––enough to cover all of my academic costs, allowing me to start paying down the debt I had already accrued.

I worked constantly. I couldn’t afford to be out of work even when classes were in session, so I always had a job. I managed to get a small monthly stipend when I worked at the school paper, keeping a part-time job at a campus dining hall. I cobbled together freelance work and odd jobs on the weekends.

During most of my last two years of school, I worked 40 hours a week for the local newspaper, first as an intern, then as a staff reporter. I packed my class schedule with morning sessions so I could take off by noon for the late shift in the newsroom. By 10 p.m. or so, I’d return to the campus library to write papers and study for hours. I’d trudge home in the wee hours of the morning to do it all over again.

I neglected my own well-being. To pay off my existing loans and keep from accruing any more debt, I had to balance a demanding work schedule with an equally demanding course load. My health suffered as time went on, though I tried to convince my mother and friends that I was thriving. I rarely slept more than three to six hours a night.

I was in a constant state of cost-cutting, and nothing was too precious to spare. There were periods when I ate very little to avoid paying for groceries, living off scant quantities of coffee, eggs, canned beans and rice. For a year or so, I didn’t have health insurance; I stopped going to the doctor and dentist, even when I needed care.

I was lucky

So why don’t I see this as a success story, a model that other low-income students should emulate? After all, I worked hard and the work paid off.

But I also know that compared with other low-income first-generation college students, I had privilege and luck on my side.

Unlike so many others in similar circumstances, I wasn’t caring for family members or siblings while in school. I wasn’t prevented from applying for federal aid because my parents didn’t file their taxes. I went to a high school that adequately prepared me for the rigors of college, and I had blindly chosen a program that offered a robust amount of merit-based scholarships to its students.

I shudder to think about all of the minutiae, the small breaks and chances I got that, only when stacked atop one another in the right order, allowed me to escape student debt. Pluck out a few lucky breaks––that my college boyfriend had $600 to lend me freshman year, or that another candidate didn’t beat me out for a large scholarship––and the tower collapses. In less fortunate conditions, any amount of hard work wouldn’t have been enough.

Ms. Fontana is Wall Street Journal reporter in New York. Write to francesca.fontana@wsj.com