At the beginning of every semester, students go through the same miserable process. They must take themselves to the overcrowded campus bookstore and buy overpriced books with overused credit cards. Nearly everyone I know complains about the price of books and the scam that surrounds the whole book-buying process. By scam, I mean the fact that a book in perfect condition can only be sold back for half its original value, yet the bookstore will turn around and sell it for far more than that.

There’s not much we can do about the prices of books. At the very least, professors should understand how frustrating it is and be conscious of how they can help to ease this painful process.

First, if you are assigning a book, make sure I will be tested on it, or that it will at least be used in the class. No, I do not want a “supplement” to the class lectures. I want to know at the end of the semester that I needed to use the book I spent $100 on to improve my performance in the class. I’m not buying it for my own enjoyment, as much as you may have enjoyed reading it.

Second, if you can, why not make copies and send us to Gnomon Copy for a class handout? I would much rather spend $7 on a few important pages than $150 on a textbook that I will only ever read a few chapters of. Plus, there is also Blackboard. You could scan in chapters and we could print up to 400 pages for free in Snell Library.

Finally, if the course is an elective, and a popular one at that, like something in the College of Arts and Sciences core, please don’t assign an excess of four books. Be understanding that as an elective, most students really don’t care that much. Sorry, but we really don’t; it just pisses us off to have to buy that many books.

Thanks for listening professors and have a great year!

– Hunter Wells is a sophomore journalism major.