2008 Woodie Awards
Stop tossing your books
Sara Morehouse
Issue date: 2/20/07
Last Updated: 8/9/07
I didn't obtain my first bookshelf until the fall of my senior year. Needless to say, I've made many Jenga towers with the books I have collected through the semesters.
No matter how much you try to lighten your load and keep everything on your Blackberry, college students end up with enough books to educate a small country.
And what do we do with these precious pages of wisdom?
We do what any self-respecting post modernist would do, we penny pinch on the newest edition of Human Anatomy to splurge on that 20 ounce chai tea latte.
The ultimate goal of many college students regarding textbooks is to get rid of them at the same rate that they come into our possession, if not faster. (To this end, making rich friends one year younger than you in your major is a smart move.) To us snappy young business-people of the future, we see this repetitive trading ritual as a precursor to smart career moves.
We are spoiled by the abundance of books available to us today.
Classrooms of children in colonial America shared few copies of the New England Primer, while we have scores of engaging literature at our fingertips.
Our generation has never been without a volume on any subject; we take the blessing of books for granted. From the banning of "un-German literature" in Nazi Germany to the burning of "Harry Potter" in a few American Protestant churches, treasured books have faced hostile censorship through the ages. We are not reading what has been won for us.
Our professors spend time reviewing books and experimenting with them to create the ideal reading lists for our classes. After we sulkily buy them, we groan over each page that we read (if we read them at all), and we promptly forget most of what we learned after the Scantron test is dotted.
I understand that the major obstacle to happy book feelings is cost. Whether purchased from our very own Whitworth Bookstore, an eBay final moment bid or a stealthy deal done with cash and a trench coat on the Hello Walk, books are probably the most expensive thing college students buy every year.
No matter how much you try to lighten your load and keep everything on your Blackberry, college students end up with enough books to educate a small country.
And what do we do with these precious pages of wisdom?
We do what any self-respecting post modernist would do, we penny pinch on the newest edition of Human Anatomy to splurge on that 20 ounce chai tea latte.
The ultimate goal of many college students regarding textbooks is to get rid of them at the same rate that they come into our possession, if not faster. (To this end, making rich friends one year younger than you in your major is a smart move.) To us snappy young business-people of the future, we see this repetitive trading ritual as a precursor to smart career moves.
We are spoiled by the abundance of books available to us today.
Classrooms of children in colonial America shared few copies of the New England Primer, while we have scores of engaging literature at our fingertips.
Our generation has never been without a volume on any subject; we take the blessing of books for granted. From the banning of "un-German literature" in Nazi Germany to the burning of "Harry Potter" in a few American Protestant churches, treasured books have faced hostile censorship through the ages. We are not reading what has been won for us.
Our professors spend time reviewing books and experimenting with them to create the ideal reading lists for our classes. After we sulkily buy them, we groan over each page that we read (if we read them at all), and we promptly forget most of what we learned after the Scantron test is dotted.
I understand that the major obstacle to happy book feelings is cost. Whether purchased from our very own Whitworth Bookstore, an eBay final moment bid or a stealthy deal done with cash and a trench coat on the Hello Walk, books are probably the most expensive thing college students buy every year.
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