It’s funny how the world works.

You know, fate and all that jazz.

I graduated from Ithaca College in May and my first job is an assistant at a college in Baltimore, I just can’t seem to get away. And as I strolled through the V Building to get some coffee I saw a line, very long line about 50 or so people deep. I followed the line and it led to the bookstore. Apparently, it was the first day of classes and everyone was in line to get the books for all of their classes.

I couldn’t help but laugh to myself thinking, “Books? Pshaw.”

I didn’t need any books in college and I graduated in four years with a 2.8 GPA (that’s a solid B, not showing off, but not underachieving). Needing books is one of the biggest lies in college, right up there with the meal plan being affordable and college preparing you for the real world. They’re just expensive, heavy, overpriced bug squashers. They make your book bag/nap sack unnecessarily heavier and are just an all around nuisance. And I’m talking ALL books, not just text books. A professor once asked me what I thought of a novel that I was supposed to read, but of course didn’t, and I gave a summary of the book that woulda brought tears to your eyes. I have written papers about books that I haven’t read and got B’s on them. Is this some obscure talent that I have? Hardly, I’m going to show you how to make it through college without having to buy a single book.

Borrowing

This is the biggest way to avoid buying a book and make friends if you don’t already have some, loser. I’ve gone through some classes without the professor even mentioning the word “book”. So some classes you get off easy. Others not so much. This is where the art of mooching comes into play. Please be warned that before any mooching is to occur you must never tell the moochee that you haven’t bought the book or they’ll see right through your plan. Unless your fortunate enough to be in the situation I was in and know someone that knew I wasn’t going to buy the book, accepted it, and let me borrow hers, that was totally sweet, but I digress. You will mostly like not find yourself in the situation I did, in that case, you must play the role of the forgetful one. You probably won’t need the book in class (key term) for a week or so depending on how often you have class, the more the better because then you can establish that you’re forgetful. Start it off slow, forget a pen or a professor’s name or the name of the course, it’s all golden. Then when you “forget your book” they’ll think that’s just you being you (if you play it off right, it could turn into an adorable trait). After a few classes of this, it’ll just become commonplace that you share the book with them, they won’t give it a second thought. After this happens, you can move into photocopying some pages or maybe even borrowing it for the night.

Fake Forgetfulness

Another method you can go for if you can’t play off forgetful is: tell them you’ll split the book with them. “Eh, I’m not going to buy the book, too expensive…hey, why don’t we split the book, that way it’ll be cheaper for both of us…what’s that? No, I don’t have any money on me, but I’m good for it.” But of course you’re not, but they don’t know that and by the time they realize it, it’ll be finals weeks. Now this is more risky because if they say no, you’ll have to find a new person to borrow from and there are only so many prime targets in one class, so make sure you can pull it off.
Take good notes

Note: Just because you don’t need to buy books doesn’t mean you can slack off, you still need to do work. Let me break it down for you: the professors will have you read the chapters and then highlight what you need to know in class. So if he’s already telling you the most important stuff, the rest is just foreplay. Oh and if he’s telling you that he’s not going to cover everything that’s going to be on the exam and you’ll still have to read the book, merely scare tactics. There may be a question here or there that’s from the book, but hey, you’re not looking to be a straight “A” student and do you really want to read 100 pages just so you can get a few more questions right? The amount of work is not worth the reward. Moving on

Have Faith in your Fellow Students

Most students are like you. They’d like to get an A, but are not willing to put forth the effort it takes so they’re not going to read the book either. So if nobody, or at least the vast minority, reads the book, the professor will be forced to teach it in class or else everyone will get bad grades and that will reflect poorly upon the professor. Just remember, students outnumber the professor and while he/she has the grade book, you have the evaluations at the end of the year. I have single-handedly gotten two teachers “removed” because I gave them a terrible eval, don’t under estimate them.

However, there are times where you need to buy the book: lousy professor, final exam coming straight from the book, have to answer questions from the book, etc. Just because you have to buy the book, doesn’t mean you have to BUY the book, ya dig?

Returning Books

There is a wonderful thing at the end of the semester where you sell back all of your books to the college and in return they give you an eighth of what you paid and then you take that money to the bar for happy hour or the alcohol store. Some call this the “book buy back”, I call it “Booze for Books”. It’s the circle of life, sunrise sunset.

However, if you haven’t opened the book, the college buys it back full price, which is way more booze for the same amount of books, so all you have to do is create the illusion that you haven’t used the book.

FYI: this is not for the amateurish and unsteady handed.

What you need to do is take a sharp knife with a smooth blade, not serrated, and gently slice the plastic vertically along the binding of the book.	Then make a slit horizontally at the top and bottom of the binding, this should allow you to slide the book out while keeping the plastic covering well intact.
Now comes the most difficult step, you only have one shot at this, so make it a good one.	Once you have finished using the book, slide it back into the plastic covering and take a lighter and gently meld the plastic back together.

If you have done this correctly, it should look good as new. If it doesn’t look perfect, don’t worry about it. These people who buy back the books will be doing this all day, so after a while, if they see there is plastic on the book, that’s good enough for them, so try to go later in the day if possible.

So now you too can say “Books? Pshaw.” whenever someone mentions that they have to go to the bookstore before it closes. Now you too can scoff whenever someone says they can’t go out because they have a lot of reading to do (which they wouldn’t be able to do anyway because they spent all of their money on books, suckers). And what do I want in return for this? This holy grail of unspoken knowledge. Nothing. I just want you to save some money for “3 for 1 night” down at Moonshadows and say hi to Teresa for me. And please don’t thank me; thank my laziness and my severe, severe illiteracy.