http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/trends/vampire_lit_gets_its_scholarly_due_157516.asp?c=rss

Um, yeah. I don’t even know what to say about it. I’m positive, based on how many different vampire books I have read, I could finish top of the class. Heck, I could teach the class. Hmm, maybe I’m onto something with that last part.

I just wonder how practical this could be. I hope to start on my masters in the next fews years. Right now I can’t afford to go back to school but I still think about it a lot. The degree I have decided on is writing science. Originally I thought about creative writing but I decided the writing science would be better because it focuses more on the business side of things which I would think would be more practical. I have trouble seeing how vampire studies would be advantagous in the future. But then again, my Lord of the Ring studies have came in handy on a few occasions so maybe vampire ones would too.

          At first I thought, who on earth would do that?  Sure, some people do but how could it me that many.  I started to think that I was one of the 10% then actually realized that wasn’t true.  Let me confess, here and now, I often copied other people’s math homework right before class.

          Shameful, I know.

          To defend myself a little, the ironic part was I always did well on the test.  The person who I cheated off of for homework, cheated off me for test.  Plus, I never cheated in college.  That degree is one hundred percent mine.  I think that was maybe the big difference for me.  High school was something that you absolutely had to do.  College was a choice I made so I felt a drive to do it well. 

          Another thing this book has made me think about so far is where I fitted in on the Overachiever vs Slacker scale while I was in school.  My high school was definately very different than the one described in the book.  The first school I went to consisted of a large numbr of kids that knew they would go to college at BYU, go on a mission, or get married right away.  As a freshman, I took AP classes but the stress of high grades didn’t come through yet.

          The last three years I attended a fairly small high school.  I think there was maybe 200 people tops in my graduating class.  Because the school was small, there was not a huge range of classes.  There was only a handful of AP classes.  I think I took the only science one available and all the english ones.  Grade wise I got mostly A’s.  A few B’s and gasp, a C in advance math which I dropped the following semester.  On my SATs I got 1280 (I have no clue how I actually remember that since I never actually needed it since I transfered into college).  I was editor of the school news paper and on dance team.  I also had a part time job.  Wow, I honestly never realized how much I did until I wrote it down just now.  I definately felt like I floated through school.  Looking back, I guess I was an overachiever.

          College I think I was an overahiever in some places but not in others.  I got nearly straight As.  My GPA would have been better if there wasn’t a huge problem with being in the wrong math class.  Two seperate advisors put me in a particular class. I strugged to no end.  I ended up failing once and dropping out half way a second time.  The third time I talked to someone I found out that all along I was in a class meant for engineering majors, not english.  I was extremely mad but at least aced the real class I needed.  Spanish was the other class I slipped down to a B a few semesters. Besides that I worked my ass off to me the top of all my classes. 

          Were you an overachiever in school?  Did you ever cheat?

          Finally something that sounds like a win-win for students and publishers alike.  An company is going to start providing textbooks for rent to college students at huge discounts.

          Obviously this is great for students.  Speaking from my own experience, textbook can run close to or over $100 on average. I’m referring mostly to the books I had to purchase in community college.  By the time I went on to Portland State, I was an english major so I didn’t have to buy textbooks anymore.  It was mostly novels and anthologies so they ran anywhere between $5 and $40.  Plus I could get a lot of them used at Powells.  Anyways, my associates degree was very expensive to get because of all the books I need.  Even trading them in I barely got 25% back.  A lot of the times there was new versions so the one I had bought could not be bought back.  This company is saying they are offering books at 40-70% off.  That is so much less than I ended up paying total for my books.  It would have saved me hundreds of dollars a semester.  Heck, I probably could have paid for my whole first semmester at PSU with the money I saved.

          The reason why this would benefit book publishers is because they can continue to make money off of books.  Correct me if I am wrong, but when the school stores buy back than later sale books, the markup does not go to the publisher.   Even if the book is only used for one year, say four semmesters, they would be making a profit each time it is rented.  That has to be more than just the profit they make the very first time.  

          Look at it this way, say the book cost $100 if the student just buys it.  If it is rented at even the whole 70% off that is still $30 a semmester.  That would be $120 made total over the year.   If they do it even at 50% off it would become a total of $200 made. Students save $50 and the companies make an extra $100. Makes perfect sense to me.

          Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think it is the future of college textbooks?