College Textbooks: Used, New, or Useless

College textbooks are to a university what air is to your lungs: just one of those things you got to have. Perhaps, that was a bit overstated, but textbooks go hand-in-hand with class but there are a few things you may need to know before you run off to the bookstore.

First, go to ALL of your classes before you buy a textbook. Okay, some classes you know you’ll need the textbook for sure, but there are always changes or problems with the professor ordering the books or the college bookstore getting them, so it’s best to just go and see if the textbook on the shelf is the one out of which the professor is preaching.

Yes, the first day of class should be just an intro but there are some psycho PhDs out there who sit in their office, rocking back and forth in a squeaky chair, just waiting for classes to start. Don’t worry though, even the looniest of lecturers understand sometimes you need to wait for a paycheck to buy college textbooks priced more than they’re worth.

Now, I used to reach for the freshest, newest, most unopened college textbook I could find, but there is really no reason. They all have the same words and say the same thing so why pay more? All you need to do is flip through and make sure it doesn’t look like someone put a pack of leaky highlighters between the pages and then stomped on the textbook. Simply put, if you don’t go for top shelf college textbooks or buy the textbooks that will just be sitting on your desk all semester then you may save enough money to treat yourself to more than just Ramen Noodles for dinner.