An addition to your crippling debt…

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! Its...

Illustrated by @geegebee

“My bookshelf full of Diary of a Wimpy Kid is hella classed up by my unused Norton Critical Edition of The Arabian Nights!” – me

As stupid as this may sound, I don’t think many of us realised at the start of our degrees just how expensive everything was gonna be.

In the words of Apone from the 1986 film Aliens, “Every meal's a banquet. Every pay check a fortune.”

While he talks about serving in the space military, I think this is a sentiment that can very much be applied to student living. If anything, it’s teaching the majority of us to be money smart which can be difficult in a capitalist hellscape where everything is pretty and shiny, and our gatherer instincts tell us to collect random tat. What it is also teaching a lot of us, is that books are fucking expensive and for what purpose?

I’m going to present you with a scenario, and if it hits too close to home, I’m very sorry.

You’ve gotten your course readings on Stream for the semester, the list of required texts and what not. It gets to day one of the semester, where you sign in and look at the course resources only to see PDF extracts of the book you’ve just dropped big bucks on.

Not just extracts, but entire chapters, the only chapters you’ll need to study for the semester. Yet here you are, $200 (excluding shipping) poorer, because you were told to buy a super duper ultra-rare physical copy of the book as a required text.

In the business, we call this “getting straight done dirty, son”.

Finding out that you’ve just poured moola into something only to get it for free is a huge slap in the face. It’s like buying Halo Infinite on release day only to see it free on Game Pass when you get home (I’m not salty about it at all I swear). It’s nice to have it physically, but is it really worth all the money you just dropped when you’re being provided with it in a digital format?

The main issue with this, for me at least, is the lack of transparency as to what WILL and WON’T be available. And even when there is some transparency, it’s usually so vague that you end up buying something to only be provided what you needed. When the majority of us are on tighter budgets, knowing where we can cut costs down in our courses would be an absolute godsend.

And while we’re on transparency, how about some when it comes to a text being actually required versus it being very heavily recommended. Yes, the course work may revolve around the idea that you’re reading the text, but when you have the option to study completely different works not even in the same genre that aren’t the text, you may have just found out you purchased an expensive book all for nothing. That example is a bit more personal, but I am sure there are at least some of you who know the exact scenario I just described.

While the long run solution is our lecturers being more specific in advance about which texts are TRULY required, or just the digital copies being provided all together, there is a much more quick and fun way to get what you need…

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

No! Its…

A SERIES OF COMPLETELY ETHICAL AND NON-DUBIOUS WAYS AROUND THIS ISSUE!!

Totally ethical and safe yes yes

At times our lecturers may “accidentally” let slip that they’ve found a site where you can obtain the eBook for free, but you “totally shouldn’t do this as it’s not gonna be good for the book’s sales, but we can’t stop you if you wanna go to this link here”.

Jokes aside about eBook piracy (which you totally shouldn’t do. You wouldn’t download a book illegally, right?), the fact that many understand how expensive the costs of these texts are, to the point where they IMPLY THAT WE PIRATE THEM INSTEAD OF PROVIDING A DIGITAL COPY is just absurd. But once again, this approach brings its own issues when we come to the subject of multiple editions.

Don’t you just love that you cannot purchase the $30 cheaper copy, which is nearly identical, because it’s not the correct edition of the book? I know that the translations or whatever are more up to date in later editions, but are they? Are they really?

So, what’s the best way around this? How do we get our lecturers to start giving us a little more transparency, or even providing an all-digital copy of the text, just the passages we ACTUALLY NEED at the very least?

I don’t fucking know I’m just a dumb third year who’s miffed that he paid a hundred bucks for Halo when he could’ve had it for free this whole time…