joback

I personally love the feeling of walking out of a store with a newly purchased book in my hands; the prospect of diving into a wonderful world built purely upon written words is what creates anticipation and excitement in the part of me that just revels in reading a good story. On the other hand, I do not share the same feeling walking out of the UH Manoa bookstore with my hands full of the textbooks for my classes; just the look of those textbooks is enough to stress me out, not only with all the schoolwork that comes with it, but also with how much those books cost and what I’ll have to do with them after the semester ends. As current college students, we know all too well about textbook troubles:  trying to find the cheapest, used book there is, buying them, and then selling them for probably a fraction of the price that we bought it for.  These troubles are heightened if we don’t even use the textbook or if we can’t even sell the book back to the bookstore because it will not be used in the next semester.  Of course, those of us who have enough financial aid, scholarships, or have parents helping to pay do not need to worry too much about buying textbooks, but we all still need to decide what to do with those bulky textbooks after the semester ends.

What’s the Trouble with Textbooks?

UH Manoa’s Spring 2017 Tuition– including fees – for general undergraduate students taking twelve or more credits is $5,866 for resident students and $16,822 for non-resident students.  That is not including the cost of dorming – if the student dorms – and not including the cost of textbooks and school supplies – which may vary depending on the student’s major.  As reported by the College Board, the average college student spends an average of $1,250 on textbooks and supplies (for a public, four-year college).  If we attend college for 4 years, that means by the time that we graduate, we would have spent about $5,000 worth of textbooks and supplies; that’s almost an entire semester’s worth (for resident students) of tuition spent entirely on books and supplies for class.  It’s true that most of us probably have some form of financial aid – whether it’s from FAFSA or from scholarships – but that money should mostly go towards paying the actual tuition and not towards additional costs like textbooks.  

Aside from increasing the overall cost of attending college, print textbooks are heavy, often bulky, and just take up too much room; and when the semester is over, what do we do with those textbooks? Do we sell it back to the bookstore at a fraction of the price we bought it for?  If the bookstore does not buy the book back, then what do we do?  Do we try to sell it online?  Do we keep it and do nothing with it?  I and many other students are faced with these questions. I sold my books back to the bookstore last semester during the buyback period; for a couple of the books that I bought for $120 and $75, I only got $70 and $35, respectively, back.  Why does the bookstore think that the price of the textbooks falls that much over the course of 4 months?  Also, the textbook I bought for my BUS200 class at $200 was not bought back by the bookstore. I still have that BUS200 textbook, but I have no idea what to do with it and it just takes up room.

The only situation where we don’t need to worry about buying textbooks is when we have classes that don’t have any required textbooks for the course.  I was lucky enough to have three classes so far that did not have any required books, but it will not always be like that for other classes.  While we cannot control how much the school charges us for tuition and fees, I believe that we do have at least some control over textbooks. Yes, it’s our professors who assign required material for the course, but it’s up to us how to acquire those materials and in what form.

Solving the Struggle

Luckily, in today’s day and age, there is a solution to this textbook struggle:  digital textbooks, also known as e-textbooks.  Even though I personally prefer to read my beloved novels as real, printed novels rather than as e-books, my opinion on e-textbooks are completely different.  I can say that I definitely do not prefer physical, hard copy textbooks to the more convenient digital e-textbook.  E-textbooks are most of the time significantly cheaper than hard copy textbooks, and they are immensely more convenient; we can take them almost anywhere with us on our laptops, tablets, or even our phones.  On another note, another benefit of e-textbooks is that, compared to a used textbook, they have no ripped, bent, or damaged pages with excessive underlining, highlighting, or messy notes in the margins from the previous owner. E-textbooks will often allow us to highlight and underline words with the option to delete them later, and we don’t have to deal with looking at whatever the previous owner did to the book. Of course, there are drawbacks to the e-books.  Sometimes, it will be difficult to find a specific textbook as an e-book, forcing us to buy the physical copy.  E-books also require an electronic device, which not all of us may have a reliable access to.  Although it may not be a solution that completely solves the textbook problem, e-textbooks can significantly help reduce the stress of the textbook struggle.

Are E-Textbooks Even Worth it? 

To personally find out whether or not finding e-textbooks is as great as it seems, I searched for the textbooks I had to buy last semester and the textbooks that I purchased for this semester as well to see if I could actually find e-textbooks that were cheaper than the physical copies that I bought from the UH bookstore.  To my amazement, I found some.  For example, this semester I am taking MATH203, and the required textbook for that class was about $170; the digital e-textbook I found was $94.94 for a 180-day digital rental.  I also found my microeconomics textbook from my ECON130 class last semester that I bought for about $75; the e-textbook was $34.08.  Another good example I found was the textbook for my HIST151 class last semester that I got for about $120; I found the e-textbook version that was $70.22, proving that e-books really can save us money on textbook expenses.

They Work . . . So What Are You Waiting For?

Of course, like most people, I think that the internet has in some way or form shaped me into the person I am today.  In a world where the internet and technology are only getting more and more advanced, it’s becoming easier to believe that the internet has been able to influence the lives of many people on this earth; it may affect some people more differently than others, but all the same, it affects them.  For me, it has mostly helped with school-related things, and using the internet greatly increased how I performed in school, especially high school and even more so now in college.  For example, I am a frequent user of things like Quizlet (for any class with tests), Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com (for writing papers), Google Translate (for my Japanese classes), and more to enhance my learning, and I can say that it definitely helped me keep my grades high, and I will continue to use them to keep my grades high.

(and with the internet, who doesn’t feel more confident in what they learn haha)

Although the internet has shaped the kind of student I am, it has not really shaped me socially.  I am naturally a quiet and shy kind of person, so it would make sense that I would be just as social on social media than I am in real life:  I’m quiet in real life, so on social media I am just as quiet if not quieter (meaning that it is rare for me to post anything on social media, even if it’s to give a like to a photo).  The only social media that I somewhat use is Facebook and Snapchat. I have an Instagram, but I don’t post anything on it anyway, and I only posted on Tumblr for this assignment (but who knows, I might start using it more after this assignment).  When I do use social media, I use it to interact with mostly my older sister and my close friends on Facebook and Snapchat.  I guess I can say that the internet has allowed me to stay close to my sister because at least once a day we send each other random, funny videos that we find on Facebook.  Other than that, I don’t really use any social media often because I’m a person with a small family and a few great friends; I see them often, so I don’t have much use for social media.

When I use the internet, I use it mostly for school and for my own entertainment.  If you would ask me what my hobbies are, I would automatically respond saying “reading and watching TV series or movies.”  That’s why I spend most of my time online catching up on TV shows and finding interesting movies to watch rather than on social media like many others.  I also spend a great time online satisfying my love for reading.  Although nothing beats actually having a real, physical book in my hands to read, I also enjoy reading stories that I find online.  I frequent various reading/writing platforms such as my favorite reading app/website Wattpad.  Because of all these other books that I can find online, I have further increased my interest in reading my favorite genres that include YA novels, fantasy, mystery, and thriller novels.