Help. I don't know how, but help.
Dear Well-Intentioned Professor,
I appreciate your efforts to support small, local bookstores. Admire them, even. And, happily, the bookstore you've chosen to support is one I'm not allowed to enter without a chaperone, on account of how much money I can spend there.
But I pay a MANDATORY $395 Non-Allocable Segregated Fee every semester. A considerable portion of this fee goes to paying for my rental textbooks. Y'know, the ones that don't cost me a penny outside of what's automatically added to my tuition when I register for a full-time course load, no matter what my textbooks would have actually cost? The ones which, if I remember university policy correctly, the bookstore is required to have a rental option on if the professor says the book is required for the class?
As you are doubtless a very intelligent person, you may have deduced that I am less than pleased by the email you sent out this afternoon, informing your students that there are FIVE required textbooks for your class, plus another three recommended texts, and that they are NOT carried by the university bookstore. I am even less pleased upon discovering that, if the Amazon.com prices are even close to the price charged by this cool local bookseller (and they often are, where new items are concerned), the required textbooks alone will cost approximately $275, and adding on the recommended texts brings it up to $340. That, by the way, is more than half of my current bank balance.
Now, I am a very skilled bargain hunter. I may be able to find cheaper. But then again, I may not. That really isn't the point. My point this: 1) I have already paid for those required textbooks. Which means you are making me pay for them twice. Which means a small bit of justice to a local bookstore with a loyal clientele turns out to be a noticeable injustice to an unemployed student.
At the end of the day, I am perfectly fine - happy, even - to patronize a local bookseller over Barnes & Noble, especially if I pay roughly the same at either location. But I cannot afford to pay $275 more just to go local, especially when I have, effectively, already paid for them through the university.
Sincerely,
Cerys
[Posted to the interwebs because, from what I can tell, I'm going to really really like this course and this professor - both as a person and as a teacher - and I namedropped one of his advisees to get permission to register for the class, and I'd feel really horrible if the first thing I dis was send him a really antagonistic email when he's very clearly trying to do the right thing.
This is maybe more distressing than it should be, because I never let my bank account go below $300 (mostly because I have to pay maintenance fees below that, but also in case there's an emergency), so in my head having $300 in the bank is the same as having $0 in the bank. And after my rent check goes through I'll only have $609, which means that in my head these textbooks could sink me into negative numbers. I think I'm going to send the book list to
moss , because I'm too distressed and low-bloodsugary to start bargain hunting on my own right now. I should send an email to the bookstore, see how much the books really are there. Can't do it in person, even though it's only a few blocks away and would be faster, because I think if I had to look the proprietor of my favorite bookstore in the eye and tell him that I can't afford to give him my business, there's a chance I might burst into tears. Which would seriously ruin my image.
Okay. Time to calm down. Dinner should have been hours ago. I need to eat, have a beer, and watch some Supernatural.]
I appreciate your efforts to support small, local bookstores. Admire them, even. And, happily, the bookstore you've chosen to support is one I'm not allowed to enter without a chaperone, on account of how much money I can spend there.
But I pay a MANDATORY $395 Non-Allocable Segregated Fee every semester. A considerable portion of this fee goes to paying for my rental textbooks. Y'know, the ones that don't cost me a penny outside of what's automatically added to my tuition when I register for a full-time course load, no matter what my textbooks would have actually cost? The ones which, if I remember university policy correctly, the bookstore is required to have a rental option on if the professor says the book is required for the class?
As you are doubtless a very intelligent person, you may have deduced that I am less than pleased by the email you sent out this afternoon, informing your students that there are FIVE required textbooks for your class, plus another three recommended texts, and that they are NOT carried by the university bookstore. I am even less pleased upon discovering that, if the Amazon.com prices are even close to the price charged by this cool local bookseller (and they often are, where new items are concerned), the required textbooks alone will cost approximately $275, and adding on the recommended texts brings it up to $340. That, by the way, is more than half of my current bank balance.
Now, I am a very skilled bargain hunter. I may be able to find cheaper. But then again, I may not. That really isn't the point. My point this: 1) I have already paid for those required textbooks. Which means you are making me pay for them twice. Which means a small bit of justice to a local bookstore with a loyal clientele turns out to be a noticeable injustice to an unemployed student.
At the end of the day, I am perfectly fine - happy, even - to patronize a local bookseller over Barnes & Noble, especially if I pay roughly the same at either location. But I cannot afford to pay $275 more just to go local, especially when I have, effectively, already paid for them through the university.
Sincerely,
Cerys
[Posted to the interwebs because, from what I can tell, I'm going to really really like this course and this professor - both as a person and as a teacher - and I namedropped one of his advisees to get permission to register for the class, and I'd feel really horrible if the first thing I dis was send him a really antagonistic email when he's very clearly trying to do the right thing.
This is maybe more distressing than it should be, because I never let my bank account go below $300 (mostly because I have to pay maintenance fees below that, but also in case there's an emergency), so in my head having $300 in the bank is the same as having $0 in the bank. And after my rent check goes through I'll only have $609, which means that in my head these textbooks could sink me into negative numbers. I think I'm going to send the book list to
moss , because I'm too distressed and low-bloodsugary to start bargain hunting on my own right now. I should send an email to the bookstore, see how much the books really are there. Can't do it in person, even though it's only a few blocks away and would be faster, because I think if I had to look the proprietor of my favorite bookstore in the eye and tell him that I can't afford to give him my business, there's a chance I might burst into tears. Which would seriously ruin my image.
Okay. Time to calm down. Dinner should have been hours ago. I need to eat, have a beer, and watch some Supernatural.]