Books too expensive for student wallets

The same thing happens every semester. I, and thousands of students like me, sit patiently on the first day of class hoping and praying that it won't bankrupt us.

We cross our fingers, flip our syllabi, frantically looking for something that may make or break our budget for the day, weekend or even our entire month.

We're looking for exactly how many books are necessary for the class. This is followed by the inevitable question, "Do we really need that many books?" Even more important we ask, "How much are these books going to cost?"

It seems like every single semester, the cost of books shoots higher and higher. Consider the fact that a lot of students work, don't have scholarships and are spending their own money for these books and you realize how ridiculous the prices are.

What happened to the good old days when we had one thick book filled with everything we needed for the entire year?

Nowadays we need three or four of those thick books for one class that lasts a semester. Since many students take three or more classes, this can add up to a lot of thick books.

Think back to the first day of class when you heard your professor utter, "I know it's a big book. Heck, I won't even bring it everyday because of the walk up here, but please try to always bring it with you to class." Sure, they won't injure themselves but we the students are fair game.

What's almost as angering is when you go and look for these books and they're never there. "Come back tomorrow, we should have it in," they say, or, "The teacher ordered them late, so they'll be in next week."

Meanwhile, that same teacher who ordered these encyclopedia sized books that you have to buy too late, is asking that you read the first eighty pages of your phantom book by the second class.

Since you can't find the book by the time you get it you have to read about 240 pages to catch up, just in time for your first test.

When's the last time you heard a teacher say, "Don't try to cram all this reading in at the last minute."

Isn't that impossible when you have to make fourteen trips to the bookstore before you finally score your book at the eleventh hour?

The really frustrating thing in all of this, though, is the fact that you never even read the entire book, let alone a sufficient amount of it, that would justify the large price.

This, of course, has nothing to do with your laziness and everything to do with the teachers realizing their high hopes at the beginning of the semester are just a little too high. Where they've got us scheduled to get through at least two-thirds of the book, we actually get through a quarter at best, leaving two books that we've bought and never read.

For example, last semester I had a class where we had to buy six or seven novels. By mid-term we had read one and a half of these books. The last two weeks of class we had read three and were beginning a new one. My teacher's solution was to tell us that we probably wouldn't be tested on the last two, but just in case we should probably take them out to the beach with us over the weekend. I got $8 back for those books, which cost me close to $50 at the beginning of the semester.

So, teachers remember this, just because they've designed new backpacks that are bigger and better for your back, doesn't mean that we should have to buy twice as many books to fill them.

My final plea, on behalf of students everywhere, is please realize that we'll never get as far as you're hoping we might. I can't name how many classes fall short on time leaving hundreds of dollars in unread books.

Oh, yeah I can, all of them!

Alex Roman is a journalism student who writes for the Daily Forty-Niner.