Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Higher Education Has Some Dirty Low Tricks

I love to read for class. I not only purchase the required, but the recommended books. I adore books. Falling asleep with one nestled in the crook of my arm is better than sharing my bed with anything else, cat or human.

Let me reiterate- I love books. As in, real, actual books. You know, ones with sturdy covers, paper or hard back. A bind is nice. Just a good solid book kinda thing going on with yummy words and numbers at the top of them that go in order.

As opposed to, oh, I don't know, just throwing something out here... a spiral bound collection of photocopied pages of books. And maybe I also prefer real school books to this hypothetical spiral bound collection of pages because they are badly copied. And perhaps in this example some of the edges are cut off, and the incomplete sentences torture me with the infinite possibilities of completion.

And I would say that I certainly prefer real school books to a situation in which this (purely hypothetical) spiral bound collection of shoddily copied pages would cost me... hmmm, let's just estimate for the sake of the example.. $55.62.

I need to type that out to let it sink in- FIFTY FIVE DOLLARS AND SIXTY TWO CENTS.

Ok, ok, at this point I need to give you total honesty- this is not a hypothetical situation. I am in possession of this sorry excuse for overpriced educational material I have described above. And when I fall asleep with it, the pages get all flipped around, the spiral comes partly out, the flimsy cardstock cover gets crumpled, and I think my cat has been chewing on the edges, because CLEARLY even he can see that it is not literature to be respected.

Basically I'm supposed to be reading this overpriced collection of select chapters from a variety of books tonight, and I know I should be grateful that I didn't have to buy all the books separately, but mostly I just wish I could have said "look prof, just tell me the things I need to read, and I'll make copies myself. Seriously. You're gonna pass this off to a TA that's been working on a 4 year hangover, this is not the optimum environment for high quality production. Please. I can do this."

Why I don't run the world astounds me sometimes.

1 comment:

  1. Hermy told me that he thinks that about himself at least five times a day; why he's not running the world, I mean. Honestly, it should just be me, you and, Hermy, all running the world.

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