Renting College Textbooks- It's a scam
So I am new to this and someone please inform me if I am doing this wrong, but I needed to tell this to someone and I knew that you guys would get it.
So I decided to rent my one college textbook for this semester thinking that it would save me some money (which, I will add, it is). Little did I put much thought into the fact that other people will be receiving this book when I return it to the bookstore that I put MY work into. Are college's almost scamming us into sharing our own hard work with one another when we rent textbooks? They encourage you to rent books that you will not need past one semester in order to save money. But they know that next semester they will be able to hand your book, that has all of your work in it already, to Joe Shmo. However, this isn't even the sad part: the sad part is that when students receive used textbooks, the first thing they look for is if someone wrote in the book and highlighted so they can use the previous owner's work to finish their work. What are colleges turning students into? Are they teaching us not to work for our own good and rather rely on what they previous person wrote to be true? Some of you may say, "Well just buy your book from the bookstore."- it's not that easy. We are only given a limited amount of time to buy back rented books to own them and I have missed that time period.
Sorry to kind of go off on this, but I knew none of my college friends would listen to me and get what I am saying because they do what everyone else does- look for work that is already in the book. What I have concluded I will do with my book: I'll just write "Who is John Galt?" on a page I highlighted on and hopefully the next owner will look it up and see my irritation.
So I decided to rent my one college textbook for this semester thinking that it would save me some money (which, I will add, it is). Little did I put much thought into the fact that other people will be receiving this book when I return it to the bookstore that I put MY work into. Are college's almost scamming us into sharing our own hard work with one another when we rent textbooks? They encourage you to rent books that you will not need past one semester in order to save money. But they know that next semester they will be able to hand your book, that has all of your work in it already, to Joe Shmo. However, this isn't even the sad part: the sad part is that when students receive used textbooks, the first thing they look for is if someone wrote in the book and highlighted so they can use the previous owner's work to finish their work. What are colleges turning students into? Are they teaching us not to work for our own good and rather rely on what they previous person wrote to be true? Some of you may say, "Well just buy your book from the bookstore."- it's not that easy. We are only given a limited amount of time to buy back rented books to own them and I have missed that time period.
Sorry to kind of go off on this, but I knew none of my college friends would listen to me and get what I am saying because they do what everyone else does- look for work that is already in the book. What I have concluded I will do with my book: I'll just write "Who is John Galt?" on a page I highlighted on and hopefully the next owner will look it up and see my irritation.
1. I wouldn't trust an unknown someone elses notes.
2. I am here to learn, and I do that best by doing it myself.
3. When I went to college, I tried to get the textbook from the university library (for courses I didn't want the book, at least), and often was able to keep it the entire quarter because everyone else had already bought one. Otherwise I usually bought used if available and sold them back at end of quarter. Obviously, I didn't highlight my books. I made my own notes using an ancient technology, notebook paper. I still do that sometimes today when learning new things because I learn it more successfully.
You should do what works best for you, of course. ;^)
As for writing WIJG on a page, I would recommend the ever-handy WIJG Post-It Notes that I got not long before the AS3 movie.
By the way, someone like you should be coming to my university (Florida Tech) to get an education worthy of Patrick Henry University graduates.