Posted on: May 21st, 2009 by Famous Phil

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!

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Tags: bookstore, college, moveout, ripoff, text book, trailer, university
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Posted on: May 7th, 2009 by Famous Phil

I just finished up my last final for this semester of college and it feels good to be done.  That is why I haven’t really been blogging much for the past few days, and it might be a few days more until I get my next blog out.  Now its basically wait for a few weeks for my professors to be not-so-lazy and post my grades and grade the finals.  I am confident that my courses will come back as high marks (none below B).  In past semesters, I haven’t been able to say the same, so that’s a good sign.

Anyways, I have a short rant about the bookstore on campus.  As you probably know, most bookstores for colleges are a huge ripoff operation focused at making maximum profit because they know they can do that and get away with it.  Anyways, I thought I’d just talk a little bit about my experience every semester and what I started doing this semester to fix the problems that I’ve noticed.

The first semester I came here, I wasn’t sure about what books I needed until the final week, so I figured that I would get them from the bookstore.  That semester, I know I spent close to 500 dollars.  That is just outrageous for a mere 4 books.  Pretty sad, isn’t it?

After that semester, I began planning ahead and finding my book titles / isbn numbers out ahead of time.  The bookstore isn’t very helpful with this either.  The bookstore hates to post the book picture on their online store, so I end up always going to the bookstore about a week before class with a pen and paper to write down everything I need.  This works fine unless the professor hasn’t yet decided on the book they wish to use.  I’ve found that the bookstore also hates ordering books early, so they rarely have all of the books until the first day of class  (even when the professor ordered them ahead of time).

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Tags: amazon, bookstore, ebay, edition, education, grades, higher education, international edition, isbn, online, rip off, ripoff, school, us edition
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