Congratulations, everyone. We’ve successfully bush wacked our way through the jungle of back to school basics with minimal casualties.

After we’ve sharpened our pencils and labeled our binders, there is still much to be done in preparation for the new school year. I’m talking everything from textbooks and typewriters to drafting tables and DVDs. In this age of advanced technology and learning, paper and pencils are often just not enough. You know that things are different when your 10-year old cousin is creating self-animated PowerPoint presentation for his 4th grade Science Fair. Unfortunately, each year of advancements brings extra expenses, recession or not. So how can we get what we need to succeed while staying on a budget?

Well, its obvious that you are familiar with the wonderful interweb- so use it.

Once you have a list of the required textbooks for the term, take yourself to the online bookshops of the world. Between Amazon, Abebooks, and eBay, you have a pretty good chance of finding that essential volume of “Erotic Art Photography” at a fraction of the cost.

If Amazon isn’t cutting the mustard, try the favourite of students and penny pinchers alike, Craigslist - since its free to post items for sale, why don’t you try selling some of your old books while you’re there? Unless, of course, it’s too emotionally draining to imagine your life without your collection of Neo-Classical American literature in soft cover, including the Coles Notes.

Unfortunately, even the omnipresent Internet sometimes can’t find what you are looking for (in this case, cheap textbooks). So what alternatives do you have to doling out $185.00 for Accounting Principles I & II?

First of all, many students seem to forget that their library is more than a study centre- it also happens to be a storage area for many, many books. Lots of the mandatory readings or required textbooks are available to you for free; you just have to go looking for them. Just make sure you check this out before the beginning of term, and be wary of the checkout policies. You don’t want to end up not being able to graduate for excessive late fines. That would make a pretty sad Hallmark card: “Congratulations… on Accumulating a Year’s Tuition in Library Dues!” rather than the customary “Congratulations, Graduate!”

If your school isn’t keeping up with the kardashians in the textbook department, you’ve still got options. This next alternative requires a little bit of commitment, but can save you a ton of cash in the end. Now, you need to gather a group of your peers together and have everyone split the cost of the text amongst the entire group. Next, you have two options: 1) take the book to a cheap copy centre and make as many copies as you need 2) scan the book at home. If you scan the book, you’ll save yourself the cost of copying while still giving you the freedom to print out whatever pages you deem necessary. For that matter, you can choose to not print anything out if you think that the content is a load of crap. Either way, you win. (Of course this is all theoretically speaking; copyright infringement is no laughing matter.)

If none of the above options are in your budget, or if you like to live dangerously, I recommend the following: dress head to toe in neutral colours, comfortable footwear, and an indiscriminate hat. Walk into the bookstore, grab the textbook you require, and proceed to find a tucked away corner in the back. Read until security kicks you out. Repeat as required.

With textbooks taken care of, all that is left to do is learn. Learn learn learn learn learn. And learn some more.

As you used your resources and resourcefulness to save some cash on textbooks and necessities, so you can apply the same concept to your learning process during the school year. Just because you’ve always taken shorthand notes on legal pads for all your classes doesn’t mean that it is the only or best way. Besides, legal pads are so 1888.

Most students at the college or university level have their own laptop computer (fancy). It astonishes me how so few of those same students actually use their computers for note taking. Whether the sheer weight of their laptop is too much to bear or they prefer to spend their time playing x’s and o’s with the cute boy/girl in the next seat, I remain as  baffled as Tara Reid’s character in Josie and the Pussycats.

Now, if you want to save yourself time and maybe even make a little cash on the side, make friends with everyone in your class who has a laptop. Next, make a schedule for note taking amongst one another to share the burden. Sign up with Google groups and upload your notes as the term progresses. At the end of it all, not only do you have study notes for yourself, but you can also sell those notes to all the suckers who lost their crumpled up pages of loose leaf. Touché, papier.

Okay, everyone, we are well on our way to being fully prepared to go back to school. As the day draws closer and I begin to dread it more and more, I try to remember that many have it worse: in China, nearly 500 children in the Yunnan province must cross the most dangerous stretch of the Nujiang River each day just to make it to class. They fasten themselves to a cable with a metal carabineer and a rope and slide across the 200-metre wide canyon, some even having to pull themselves across the expanse with their bare hands.

Darn it! I forgot my homework.

So I guess I don’t have much to complain about.

Makes Cents (1)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Living, Money, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, Keeping up with the Kardashians, Melissa Janke Oliver, Neo-Classicism, Savings, Screw You Recession, Student Debt, Tara Reid