I hate college politics at my university. There are many reasons and examples, but today I am specifically referring to the "textbook buyback" thing they do at the end of every semester. I put that in quotes because it is literally a crap shoot whether you will actually get any money back from your books. I take that back. It isn't a crap shoot. It is more like a rigged carnival game. Let me just tell the story of the three books I tried to sell back today.
Book 1: Technical Writing
This book is available from normal people as one written by a guy or a couple guys (or gals) who wrote a book about how to do technical writing. My university decided that in order to better serve their purposes they needed to customize the book and have it published as a proprietary resource for my class. What does this mean exactly? What customizations were made? They took Chapter 3 and moved it to the end of the book even though its still titled Chapter 3, and they added a useless 12ish page appendix of examples of term projects that have been done in the past for the course. Since it is a proprietary publication now they are allowed to charge whatever they want for it and so they charged twice as much as the original book. I went back today to sell it back and was told they were not accepting that book for buybacks. I asked why and was told "I don't know". Well maybe you wouldn't mind finding out since I literally losing out over a hundred dollars here for a book I'm never going to use again.
Book 2: Stats
So I pull out my equally useless Statistics book next. Let me give a little backstory for this one first. I bought this book a year ago when I took the class the first time and failed. I kept the book because I knew I was going to have to take the class again. What I didn't think about at that time was what if they change the version of the book that they are using. Well when I got to class the first day of this semester and saw all the books that everyone had, they all looked pretty much the same as mine did. I checked all the problems and everything was the same. There was one small difference. I noticed a little yellow seal on the others that wasn't on mine which stated something like "super duper crap website version". I went up to ask my useless professor if there were any major differences between the book I had and the book they had and he stared at me stupidly and said... you guessed it! "I don't know." Do you not read the stupid book that you are forcing us to read? You really can't tell me if there are any major differences between them? I showed him my version and he looked at it as if he had never seen it before in his life. I mean I may as well have been showing him an orange and asking him if it was similar to an apple. You required me to buy this book less than a year ago don't you remember? Do you wash every memory of each semester out of your head when it is over? Sigh... Anyway so after further investigation I found that the ONLY difference between the books is that mine didn't have little star things on some of the problems telling me to go to said super crap website for more info. When I tried to sell this one back I didn't quite expect to have any success seeing as how they have a policy that they don't buy back books that are later than the current version the course is using. And I mean even if you bought the version that they were using THIS semester and NEXT semester they are using a different one then you are screwed. I didn't have success with that one but I did at least think that the lady would say something other than "I've never seen this one before" when I handed it to her seeing as how it has the EXACT SAME COVER AS THE CURRENT VERSION!
Book 3: Biology 100
Another of those wonderful customized books that the college sells to you at an outrageously inflated price since they have a monopoly on availability of the book. This one is interesting because it is more like a giant packet sold to you in shrink wrap and then you have to buy also a three ring binder to put it in. Its not bound at all. My sister took this class last semester and they wouldn't buy her book back then so I just took hers and used it. I decided that I'd go see if I had better luck selling it back than her. So I pull this one out and ask the lady if they are taking it back and she says no. I asked her why and was surprised when she didn't say "I don't know". Instead I was told that they were not buying these back because they are unbound... You SOLD IT TO ME THAT WAY!
Book 4: Calculus (not this semester but a must hear)
Another book that I am now stuck with is a gigantic useless piece of crap Calculus text book. This book is written actually by the head of the math department at the college which is why they use it. I bought this book when I took Calc I and was told at the end of the semester "if you are taking Calc II next semester then you should just keep your book because it uses the second half of the same book". So I kept it thinking I would just sell it back at the end of the next semester. So next semester rolls around and guess what... There's a new version of said crap text book that they now want me to buy. The differences? The new one has just as many mistakes and typos as the old one they are just in different places. Also they decided to change all the page numbers so that instead of the teacher being able to say "turn to page #" he would have to say "turn to the section on [topic]". The book is huge and outrageously expensive and almost 100% useless as a tool of education. We only used the book as a method of getting problems to do but never as a reference on how to do them. The explanations and proofs given in it make absolutely no sense and leave out the important steps that actually show you how and why the thing works. What makes me the most angry about this one is the pinche math department buttlicker knew that he had a new version of his book coming out but didn't tell any of us. Instead they were telling us to keep the old one even though they knew it was going obsolete just so they could make some more money. I still fantasize about smashing the monstrous thing over his fat little head.
When I ran out of books to sell back and had struck out on all three the little lady at the register gave me this pitiful little look like she was actually sorry for me and offered condolences in the form of a funsize Kit-Kat bar that I would have gotten anyway. I am considering going downtown and selling them to the homeless as fuel for their fires and padding for their coats. Too bad its Spring now and not Winter. So the moral of the story is: to avoid frustration over what to do with your textbooks at the end of the semester, may I suggest having a bonfire.
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