With each new class comes a new list of “required” readings. Some are long, but list mostly cheap books; others are short, but require books you’d have to sell your dog to purchase.
Whatever the case, a semester’s worth of books costs a lot of cash. Now, I could sit here and bitch about how textbook company executives are assholes and how the professors who see the need to require 10 books for one class can play in traffic, but I won’t.
Instead, as I enter my last year in college, it’s time to uncover the hidden and dark secret I discovered years ago: You don’t have to, and you shouldn’t, buy all the required books listed in your syllabi.
Shocker, I know. I’ll give you a second to catch your breath. (Pause.)
OK, now we’re good. During my first semester, I don’t know if I was stupid or naive, but I purchased every textbook listed for every course before I even stepped foot in the classroom. That $500 textbook bill turned out to be a waste of money because in that semester, I opened four of the 16 books I had purchased.
From then on, I slowly discovered a method I could use to determine whether a textbook was actually going to be “required” to pass the class, and if so, how to spend the least amount of money to get it. So here we go, make sure you take good notes.
First, wait until you actually attend one session of each class before deciding what textbooks to get. Even in my senior-level classes this year, there are brown-nosers who pile their books on their desks in the first class meeting to show the professor what excellent students they are. But if you wait, you can hear what the professor has to say about each book, which gives you an idea of which books will be the most important.
For example, if many of the readings come from one book, you may be inclined to suck it up and buy it. But if you’ll be done with said book only two weeks into class, then you’re probably better off bumming it from a friend for a few afternoons. Similarly, if you know a term paper will rely on information from a specific book, it’s probably a smart idea to go purchase that bad boy.
Once you discover what textbooks you actually need, your next thought is probably about where to find them for the least money. The bookstores on the campus all flaunt that they have the lowest prices, when in fact, they don’t. I have purchased books from every book seller around the campus, BookHolders included, and have discovered they are all liars who charge a lot for books while offering “buy-back” gimmicks even though they know they won’t give you a fair price for them come the end of the semester.
So, where are you supposed to buy the damn things?
Glad you asked. Buying textbooks online is the cheapest and most efficient method I have found. Amazon has almost every book you could want for relatively cheap prices. If, however, you’ll only need the required text for two or three weeks and then you’ll be done with it, my advice is ordering it through Chegg. As long as you return the book to Chegg within 21 days, you get a full refund (read: free books!).
Different people have different ways of determining which books to get and discovering the cheapest way to get them. But personally, I know I will not be purchasing all of my 32 “required” textbooks this semester.
If you take nothing else from this column, just remember one thing: Save yourself time and money by only getting the books that will actually be required to pass.
Now you know the secret. Just don’t tell my professors.
Josh Birch is a senior communication and history major. He can be reached at birch@umdbk.com.
