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.

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).

Unfortunately, the first semester I took this approach, I ended up spending top dollar on 2 books in the bookstore 4 days after the first day of classes, I also waited in line for a solid hour, something I rarely do because I plan ahead to avoid it.  I have learned that professors don’t really expect students to have the books until a week into the semester.

After that semester, I took a slightly revised approach: look on the professor’s site for the isbn, etc ahead of time, and use the bookstore as an aid on the last day before classes.  For the past few semesters, this has worked out really well for figuring out what I have to get.  I then normally go on ebay / amazon and pay for 2-3 day shipping guarantees.  This hasn’t failed me yet, and the longest a book ever took to get to me was 4 days into the semester.  It was also about 75% cheaper than a bookstore only option.

One word of warning with buying books online, normally online books are cheaper and can sometimes come as an international edition.  The international edition is normally the same as the edition in the bookstore, but normally paperback and smaller.  There are always 2 versions of a book, an international cheap copy for third world countries, then the US version which is expensive and sold in the US.  Using the internet, you usually can find an international copy that is located in the US so shipping is still fairly fast.

I haven’t had an issue for international editions that I’ve been able to get, but I still watch out for online homework keys.  These are normally packaged with bookstore books.  Unfortunately, I have found out that when you have to have these keys separately, they end up being as much as the book in the bookstore with the key.  So, if I know about online homework (I usually have a clue on the first day of class or bookstore “bundles”), I will wait for the first day of class to verify that before I get a book and get suckered into buying a key from the book publisher’s website.