You are one of thousands of students who are in the same position as a result of attending this school. Unfortunately, it is too late to reverse the decisions you made in the past, but you can perhaps find some meaning in life by owning up to your mistakes and helping other students to avoid making the same ones you did.
First......Good for you for not signing the statement they gave you! Part of the problem with these schools is that they use misleading consumer information. Refusing to sign a statement that they helped you to find a job in your field helps to curb these abuses.
Second......there are a number of steps you can take to get a handle on your student debt, particularly for your federal student loans (Direct Stafford and/or Perkins loans). Here are a few suggestions:
1. Take advantage of income contingent or income based repayment plans that can lower your payment to a percentage of your income.
2. Although you could not consolidate your private loans, you should be able to consolidate your federal loans so you have just one income contingent payment.
3. Consider applying for a deferment or forbearance for your federal loans based on economic hardship. Although interest will still be piling up, defering payments can allow you to concentrate on paying down your private loans for a couple of years.
4. Consider finding a job with a public service organization (hospital, school, non-profit, etc). If you work for such an organization, and make 120 on time payments, you can have the balance of your federal loans forgiven. If you've chosen an extended or income-contingent payment plan, you would have lower payments now, and a balance left after 10 years that could be forgiven entirely.
5. Volunteer with Americorps or Vista or service with the National Guard. All have programs that provide funds for repaying student loans, and you may gain some work experience or connections that can lead to a better job.
6.. Call your private loan lender BEFORE you go into default and discuss your options. If you're pro-active about it and work with them, often you can negotiate a reasonable payment, particularly if they feel that you can be depended on to pay regularly. If you wait until you are in default before contacting them, they generally don't want to hear it.
7. I really don't like to recommend this, but another option is bankruptcy. You cannot use bankruptcy to discharge federal student loan except in documented cases of extreme hardship, but very often you can with private student loans. Bankruptcy is a serious step that affects your credit for years, but if your credit is going to be ruined anyway because you simply can't make the payments, it is a possibility. If you're considering this, consult a good bankruptcy lawyer first--sometimes when faced with a student who is going this route, a loan company will opt to offer terms, but an attorney is much more likely to be abe to negotiate this than you could yourself.
You are not a pathetic excuse for a human being--you are the victim of a dishonest corporation that preys on young, uneducated people. Did you know that ITT Tech's training for admissions representatives used a technique called "The Pain Funnel"? It involves using a series of psychological questions to tap into prospective students' emotions and to probe them more and more deeply until the prospect feels that they have no choice but to sign up or they will be a worthless person all their lives. And this is just one of the dirty tricks this corporation used. The link below is for a Senate report from July 2012 that details what was going on behind the scenes at ITT Tech when you were a student there:
http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/for_profit_report/PartII/ITT.pdf One of the best ways I know to rise above being a victim is to fight back. Send a copy of what you wrote above to your state and federal legislators and to local newspapers. Write regular reviews on college info sites, or volunteer to talk to students at local high schools so others won't fall into the same trap. Open an account at Linked-In and participate in financial aid discussion boards, or write letters about your experience to financial aid organizations like NASFAA (the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators). There are many, many people out there who are very concerned about this problem and are working hard to change it. Join them, and you may have a very good reason to live.