Textbook Buyback Lotto

It's that time of year again on USI's campus. It's damp and dreary, everyone keeps their head down when walking to class, and they're all secretly panicking about that one final where the professor hates them and the subject matter is incomprehensible but it's required for their major so they're pretty much screwed. But soft! There is a bright side to these dark days, and it is called "Textbook buyback."

I've always enjoyed textbook buyback. I feel like I've won the lottery. You know, the kind of lottery where the cost of the tickets is six times your actual winnings. Oh wait, that kind of is like the real lottery, isn't it? And it's even more like the lottery because half the time, your god damned books aren't buy-backable because they're changing the text for next term (which they do just to aggravate you. Personally).

Having had a rather poor and constantly-driving semester, I was very happy to see a surprise $97 enter my hands on Tuesday. Technically I'm not finished with these courses, but damn it, I was hungry. I felt rather happy about that amount of money, because I've got it in my head after two straight terms of humanities a few years ago that I won't get more than half a dollar back for any given book, and that's if I'm lucky. If I'm not, the trash bin will be receiving a special gift for Christmas this year - it's that psychology text you've always wanted! What, you have three already? Well, you can never have too many, you ungrateful inanimate object! What? You got me a half-drunk, melted chocolate shake? Great. It's vouchers to Rural King for you next year.

I think the end of fall term is better for textbook buyback than end of spring term, partly because it's very rare to have a department completely change texts in the middle of the year. I have a theory that I just made up right now that while we're all getting drunk and flashing our bodies at some creepy thirtysomething who's made a living off of filming coeds flashing their bodies at him on spring break, the department heads stick around and decide just how many of their current texts they're going to say, "Screw it!" to. They may do this out of jealousy, or they may do this as a chemical reaction to red horns sprouting from their temples every spring, but I haven't established a control group or done the appropriate level of testing to say for certain, mainly because I suck at that.

I didn't bother selling back one of my texts because I had it in my head that first week, right after my professor said, "We aren't going to be using it, since you all used it in the prerequisite class to this," I would immediately ask for a refund. Naturally, I had better things to do like sleeping and playing Halo. That leaves me in the situation of having a perfectly shrink-wrapped textbook with the software code unactivated, and now I won't get the full price I paid for it, despite it being a) in mint condition, b) never removed from box, and c) the kind with the firing rocket that blinded a kid so they discontinued it the first week.

I suppose the bright side is we get money back at all. It won't be enough to buy gifts for all our friends, but after they spawn camped you last week, do they really deserve anything other than a dog turd? I didn't think so.