Money Money Money

I really do try not to complain on my blog that often and I definitely try not to rant either, but this situation calls for a little of both. For those of you who do not know, Appalachian has a textbook rental program which allows students to rent the books and return them at the end of the semester. This is a great idea and it is supposed to help cut down on the money students have to spend buying textbooks. Sadly, the system doesn't work as well as it should. What most students don't realize is that you DO pay for the books, there's a fee in your tuition and fees each semester around $300 that you're charged and you don't even get to keep the books. On top of that, you can't sell the books back at the end of the semester for some extra spending money. This also means that you usually have to wait an hour to get your books at the beginning of the semester and deal with grouchy volunteers who yell every 5 seconds for you to "Have your Appcard out!".

None of these things bother me, what bothers me is that even with that system, students are still forced to buy books for classes and these books are usually expensive. As an Apparel and Textiles major, I have had to buy around 5 books for my major classes alone. These books range from around $65 to $110 a piece. As if that's not bad enough, there's repetition I now own two fashion illustration books that have the same exact information. I realize that a lot of college students are wealthy or at least their parents are, but I am an exception to that idea. My parents are not wealthy and seeing as I have no car or time for a job, I am broke. Still when my professor said we had to purchase our Fashion Illustration book, I scoured Ebay and found it for around $80 and received my order before they even had the textbook at the bookstore. So imagine my horror when today I find out that she told us to buy the wrong book, the book I bought is now a rental and there's a $91 book that we have to buy. Also there's still a $64 book that we have to buy as well. I'm sorry but this makes me furious and more than that I just want to tell these professors "I'm not rich, I'm flat broke. I don't even have cable or internet because I can't afford it, so the last thing I want to do is pay $150 on textbooks for your class, especially after spending $80 to buy a book I didn't even need to BUY!" I don't understand how we are expected to keep shelling out money on top of our tuition for things like textbooks when there's this rental program that is supposed to alleviate the high textbook costs.

Don't even get me started on the fact that we have to pay tuition while we do our internship. That means not only will I be doing 400 hours of work for free at an internship, my parents will literally have to pay for me to work, hence I will be paying to work.

College, you are ridiculous.