one of the
pitfalls of being a
compulsive packrat is the inability to discard
textbooks at the appropriate time.
the end of the school year comes and instead of selling back the textbooks of courses past for <10% of their original price, said packrat decides that he or she may find them
useful at some later date and thus packs them up along with his or her other belongings.
this makes a certain amount of sense, being that it's cheaper to buy the same book only once, rather than buy it,
sell it back for a few dollars, and then spend another $60 - $120 on it later. in theory, it's very
logical. however, let's be honest - most of such textbooks will never again see
the light of day. there's a possible exception when discussing
computer programming books, as these are
reference materials in the purest sense. but even these will be
obsolete soon enough to make it perhaps more worthwhile to simply give in and buy a
newer reference.
and there may also be an excuse for keeping things like
the norton anthology of english literature or
philosophy textbooks comprised only of essays and no
superfluous textbook-y crap to detract from them.
but there is no reason why
sane persons not employed in these fields need volumes on
truckdriving or
physical health or
psychological health or
paralegalism or
building small electronics. sane persons do not need a third of a set of
cheap encyclopedias from the 1930's. sane persons do not need a copy of every
evaluation text ever sent to any professor at their college. sane persons resignedly drag their textbooks to the
bookstore, get their $13 and look forward to their summers with far fewer
heavy boxes to lug around.