Remember when you were in elementary school, and on the first day of class, your teacher would hand you a textbook, telling you to take good care of it or you would pay for it? And you shrugged off that warning like the warning to not blow into your Nintendo games?
Somewhere, my past teachers are laughing at me.
I don't know how you felt after buying books, but I know after it was all over for me, the bookstore rolled off me and lit a smoke. I mean, the least it could do was buy me breakfast after screwing me like that. I have three classes worth 12 credits this semester; yet somehow I have 17 required books. SEVENTEEN BOOKS FOR THREE CLASSES! You know, getting milked out of whatever Kwanzaa money you get after the holidays by the bookstore is as inevitable as a shirtless Ja Rule unexpectedly showing up in another person's video and screaming \Holla"". And yet, every time the semester begins, I come back to it, like an abused lover coming back after being cheated on repeatedly.
The ways this campus bleeds us are infinite. For instance, one of my friends had to pay $250 for four books. And these weren't big-ass textbooks either. These are 100-to-120-page paperbacks that cost a nickel to print. Another friend of mine has 16 books for one class! I don't recall reading 16 books in my entire life, much less in one class. And once you get the syllabus, you realize that your $45 book is only useful for one week. It's honestly like your high school prom, when you paid $100 for the limo and you only get it for two hours with the date that's going to ditch you for your best friend because he happens to have tickets to that 98 Degrees concert she wanted to see ... still bitter? You bet your ass I am!
After they steal your $300, do you think it's over? Just one second Skippy, you still have to buy the course reader which can only be purchased at the ASM printshop for $55.00. And don't even think about using last semester's version which you got from a friend, because this one has two different articles which you'll need. So when ASM isn't screwing you over with your seg fees going to the Lesbian Vampires Alliance, they're charging 55 bucks for this 75-page reader. Why $55? Well, you didn't think the ASM kids actually ran for office because they wanted to serve, do you?
And we all know how this is going to end. At the end of the semester, I am going to return my 17 books for which I paid $300 for and get back the paltry sum of $25. And with a straight face, the clerk is going to explain to me that my history book which I paid $45 for is now only worth $1 because a new edition is being used next semester because A) so much has changed regarding the HISTORY of American foreign policy and B) the new edition has a picture of a man in a hat, which my archaic edition doesn't.
Three days into classes, and I already need a hug.
