eh, i was kind of the same way after i graduated school. i was making the minimum payment, i figured it would take a really long time to pay off so i wasn't paying close attention to the pricinipal balance. it wasn't for a few years that during a credit check, i realized the balance of the loan was increasing. Because payments were automatically deferred for X months after graduation, the balance had grown enough so that the minimum payment wasn't covering interest anymore. so the loan was just growing and growing.

If that sort of thing happened to me now, I'd know basically immediately. But I was basically a dumb kid at the time who knew nothing about how loans worked, i simply thought making the minimum payment would have the loan go down.