Once More Unto the Breach

I like to be the first to arrive. I like the dense, settled energy of an empty classroom. I almost resent the arrival of other people because it stirs everything up. But arrive they will for the 7:30 p.m. section of probability and statistics.

It's late and it's a community college, so the class is mostly adult students, people with jobs and kids. I look around the classroom and am comforted by the number of brown faces (though the instructor is, predictably, a lumpen far-outer-edge-of-middle-aged white guy). I like brown faces in a classroom. They remind me of me.

I've not purchased the textbook yet, even though the first homework is due on Tuesday. I'm in shock at the ridiculous prices of texts suddenly. The class text is a paperback, about 300 pages, and it should cost about $30, but instead it costs $102. Used is about $15 less, so there were of course no used copies in the bookstore.

(Textbook prices are suddenly (?) insane. The first time I paid over $100 for a textbook was years ago, years and years, and it was for a gorgeous, hardback, glossy-paged biochemistry text and the teacher apologized and approved the use of older texts, explaining that for a basic class a new text was definitely not necessary. So it makes me wonder why a basic math class requires a new $102 text. But no matter. Still, I can't believe the extent to which textbook companies are gouging students. While I was casting about for what class to take, I looked over the first semester physics classes (which I've already taken) and was appalled at the cost of the text, a stomach churning $250. Bear in mind that tuition for the class is only around $200, so students are paying more for a text than for the instruction. Ridiculous.

So that's my rant.)


(Rant Update: I did go and pay $102 for the text and I stripped the plastic wrap off of it and I am doubly disgusted. It is the flimsiest paperback I have ever owned. The paper is of such low quality that it resembles those awful paper squares that filled the toilet paper dispensers of my elementary school. It's got a greasy feel to it and instead of a wonderful new book smell, it smells cheap and sour. I guess now I know what being ripped off smells like.)

Anyway, enough of that. What's done is done.

I just got back, actually, from the second class meeting. I left half an hour early because the instructor has decided to devote 15-30 minutes of each class to doing the homework assignment. And my response to this is, "?!" with a little more, "!!!!" thrown in for good measure.

Anyway, so what so what so what. My new thing that I'm trying is just letting shit like that go. We'll see how that works, I guess.