Remember high school when text books were free until you lost them, and even then it was cake to steal one and pass it off as the original copy assigned to you?

Yeah, those were the good old days. Money was well spent on alcohol, weed and the occasional movie in the theaters. Getting accepted to Binghamton meant a decent education for a relatively cheap price. Our unsuspecting minds could not have fathomed the possibility of spending our money on something like TEXTBOOKS.

The first week of college consists of locating the strange buildings in which we will be sitting with 250 other unsuspecting suckers, listening to one man or woman reading from a prepared set of notes that can be found online in the first place. After the joyful first day, we find ourselves with approximately four syllabuses that list the required texts of which we have to read a chapter of by the next class (the day after tomorrow).

Eager to get the reading started, we begin to pursue the actual task of acquiring the books.

As freshmen, and for some sophomores, driving is an unfeasible concept, so our first move is to go to the New University Union. Oh joy! A place nearby that sells books to make it more convenient for us, right? Wrong. We must not forget that this hand proverbially washes that one too. In exchange for the “convenience” of having an on-campus bookstore, we get to pay even more than the approximately $500 that we would have spent on books.

The discovery that the on-campus bookstore is more expensive than the off-campus Mando Books and Bookbridge stores leads to a frantic search for a car and driver. By the time they are found, it is about three or four days into the school week and the reading, that we are unable to do because of the lack of books, begins to feel like a vice tightening around our necks.

Finally, we make our way to Mando or Bookbridge and we learn that the couple of dollars that we would have saved on books is spent on clickers that are used as attendance takers. Imagine a $20 to $50 device that lets the professor know that you’ve chosen to sleep in class rather than in your bed.

Of course, there is always the alternative of saving some money by sharing a textbook with a buddy. However, this route means one runs the risk of having synchronized procrastinating habits, ultimately reaching desperate times when both finally decide to read before a big test and have to battle it out “Celebrity Deathmatch”-style to see who can use the book.

So weigh your options, boys and girls: money or grades? Whichever route you have chosen to take, going through all that trouble to get those books was all so you can do the hours of painful reading ahead of you. Welcome to college, kids.