Although I wanted to write much of the following content a few weeks ago when I was packing to go home for the summer, I was strapped for time. Therefore, I’m making this post now.
Moveout
At the end of every semester, I always try to get out of UB a few days early to beat the last minute move out rush, and this year was no exception. I was fully packed and ready to go about a day in advance. After last year’s fiasco, I thought that having a covered trailer instead of an uncovered truck bed would be a much more efficient way to move out and protect my stuff from mother nature’s worst. Last year’s move out brought thunderstorms and a lot of rain which complicated move out a lot (not to mention that I got completely soaked during the move out and remained soaked through the hour and a half ride home. I said to my father, “never again without a covered trailer”!
Luckily, this year, we had no rain (I looked at the forecast days ahead of time and actually moved the date once) and we had a nice big covered trailer. The move out process this year went very smooth! Just one minor nose bleed later that night that was caused by the dry air and elevation change going home. Unpacking was also very easy since we had space all set.
Lets move onto college text books
Every year brings the same old problem, I buy books at the beginning of the semester for my classes: cost: “arm and a leg”. I return my books to the bookstore at the end of the semester: recovered funds: “next to nothing”. If you are a college student, you probably know exactly what I mean!
For my first 2 years at UB, I ended up spending about 400 bucks per semester on books at the bookstore for classes. During the course of the semester, I might have opened up 1 book daily, while the rest sat idle until the end of the semester. I would then return those books that I almost never used (and will never use again) and I get MAYBE a whole 50 bucks back for them. To me, that is a ripoff; to the bookstore, that is business as usual. Its a shame that this happens to college students like myself, but its a fact of life (at least I began accepting it until 2 semesters ago).
Another problem that the bookstore has that it never stocks the books that I need until AFTER the semester has started. I’m not sure if this is the professors’ fault or their fault, but it always seems that my books are never in stock when I go to get them. This really hurts me because I goto the bookstore about a week in advance to avoid the line. I don’t have time to wait during the peak hours of the bookstore when the wait in line can be up to 2 hours. I’ve done that once, and the really sad part is, I never opened that book once during the semester.
Finally after 4 semesters of doing this, last fall, I decided to go online for my books. This can be tricky business, but I always end up going to the bookstore’s website to see what the cover looks like. This makes it easy for me to ebay the book and see what I need. I tend to use ebay because of the buyer protection policies and ebay is generally faster at shipping than my experience on amazon (your results may vary). Sometimes, books come in bundles, I watch out for this often because professors like to use online keys to enable some homework site. This is especially true in general education courses, and watch out because these book bundles aren’t cheap (I paid $180 for my french book last semester and got nothing back from the bookstore).
I have also smartened up to some books that I probably won’t use, I wait until the first week. I’ve discovered that every year, ALL of my professors don’t expect you to have the course materials for the first week. I always have my laptop on me, so while in my class, I order the book on eBay if I think I will use the book more than once. This works on everything but those bundles that I mentioned above. I also would recommend making sure the book is available on ebay a few days prior to going to class, once, a book wasn’t available and I had to get it out of the bookstore. I will also note that you should watch where your items are coming from on Ebay since overseas shipments take a long time to get to the US.
My final tip involves international vs US editions of books. In education, there are generally 2 editions with the same material inside. International editions tend to be paperback and US editions are usually hard cover. The front cover image usually is different also. I’ve used international editions for a semester now and they are much cheaper to obtain on eBay and there is usually a seller within the US with them.
I hope that the above bookstore stuff will help you wisen up faster than I did. Of course I still have to buy an occasional book from the bookstore, but it isn’t nearly as bad now as it was a few years ago. Looking back, I think I’ve wasted at least 1500 bucks of my money on useless books which is a real pity.
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Tags: bookstore, college, moveout, ripoff, text book, trailer, university
Posted in Student Life