College Nerd Brag!

Just got 3 out of 4 books for $20.00! Oh yeah! I used my expo tv account to get one $15 dollar gift certificate, and bought old copies of everything else...the fourth book is OUT OF PRINT and apparently doesn't exist...ugh. I found images from it but that's it. Beyond that, I'm doing a happy dance inside. Can't beat 20 bucks...unless it's free of course! ;)

On another note, doing ANOTHER happy dance because TBH, it looks like Spectral Interpretation is going to be a THOUSAND Times easier than Physics...yes, Physics ONE (calculus based though!) and I feel great that I can wash the taste of that "C" out of my mouth with some good old Chemistry. =D

It turns out this teacher told us we can come in "whenever" to do the labs for this class, and can work in pairs. Once we do our experiments, we are welcome to come and do the final, a practical examination (an interpretation of an unknown organic compound), and if we don't like our score, we are allowed to TAKE IT AGAIN until we do like our score.

<3 <3 <3

... How.
So far I've found one out of the seven textbooks I've purchased used. The rest I've had to buy brand new, because they aren't popular enough.

Daaaamn, girl.

I dropped like $330 this semester for just TWO books. Best part? I can't even freaking sell them because one is a textbook published by the college itself and two others I have have those damn online codes to do homework/quizzes online and they're worthless to someone else in the class. Pisses me off..

The price of textbooks has always been just outrageous. The reason, of course, is there are so few printed the per book producction costs are high. It would make more sense to me to have a standard set of textbooks that ALL colleges used...with more copies sold, the prices would be much, much lower, which would save them money, as well as school systems in grade and high school where the texts are supplied by the schools. But, it is not our way to do things logically...

Yikes, even though I buy rented and used books I still can't match what you bought your books for.

How did you do that?

I don't even bother trying to sell my books back to the university, it's not worth it. I sell them to other students or I put them onto Chegg or Amazon later. Someone will need them.

Ah well some of what I did this term was get lucky.

Here's what I did:

I checked online for the best prices for my books. YIKES! I decided I didn't want to pay 100 dollars for a book published in 2002....

So I checked torrents (I know, I'm a jerk...) and it WASN'T available...balls...Finally I decided to check retailers again, and lo and behold, there's an older edition for almost $2.00 plus shipping for a total of approx five. Check one.

The next I got a slightly older copy from Amazon. It was approx. $23.00. Now since I've been paying all the stupid legal fees and my husband is about to be really broke, I've gotten creative. I have an expo tv account. Basically you review products you own that are on the list (with new stuff coming out all the time), and they give you points at a generous rate. Points are redeemed for things like....Amazon gift cards. I redeemed my last $15.00 of points, and paid out of pocket about $10.00.

The last book I got pretty much the same deal...older edition. MOST professors don't care if you get the older edition..I have had this guy in the past, and he could care less. You can save a LOT of money simply buying last year's edition, because let's be honest....most of that stuff doesn't change. They may have added a couple of pictures, but usually that's it.

Face, that would be terribly difficult to do, especially for programs like mine (Forensics).

In fields where information changes often, how would you do that in a financially sound way? Plus, there are multiple levels of similar information. The way to do it is make the books REASONABLY PRICED like they are overseas.

I wish I could get used versions from way back for real cheap. But alas, a lot of my classes have a lot of legal stuff in the them, ad its also a lot of Alberta specific based info, so not really high in demand text books.

Oh oh, want an awesome professor for books/spending?
How bout one that needs the newest edition of the book, doesn't like the cases in the new text so then has the students purchase different cases online. And of course the text is one of those online code ones so is now worthless for resale.

How far in advance do you get your text book list?
I have wanted to order texts through anywhere else cheaper, but there is times I don't get a finalized list of what textbooks needed until less than a week before class.

Ouch Diesel.

One thing I learned...NEVER NEVER NEVER open the book until after the first day of class...sometimes the first week. IF it won't be needed RETURN IT!!!! =(

My book list wasn't up until the first day but usually it's a couple of weeks. Depends on the prof.

So do you go the first couple classes with out the text then? Because the first class is always so useful anyways ha.

Never had the text book not needed in the past four years. Never even had a class that didn't have a textbook in the first place. Just couldn't catch a break haha.

But I'm done in December! And I am never, ever buying another textbook!
Ha, what am I kidding. By the time I get to my certification (2 years after graduation) it'll probably be calling for a text book too.