It’s the first day back on campus, or for some of you your first day of college. Welcome to school everyone.

1. Talk to strangers. Introduce yourself to whomever you meet and ask them questions. Try not to talk for more than 30 seconds at a time and ask new people about themselves. This is the core of being charming, and will make people remember you, because you made them feel important, instead of being that jerk who talked about themselves for 10 minutes.
2. Don’t be afraid of your professors. Just go to their office hours and introduce yourself, let them know you stopped by just to be sure you could find their office when you need it. DO IT THIS WEEK.
3. Know your college’s add/drop dates, and if you don’t feel good about a professor DROP YOUR CLASS before the last add/drop date. It sucks to get a W on your transcripts just because you didn’t know the dates. Iffy on one of them? Check RateMyProfessor.com (or something similar) and see if the reviews match that feeling you’re getting.

Well, Chegg shipped quickly and I got my books a few days earlier than expected. They. came in 3 boxes, 2 from Chegg directly and one from Amazon – I assume they ran out of that one, so I have on fancy brand new rental book

They’re all in good condition, with only one looking obviously used, like a typical used bookat this university. Each has a bright orange sticker on it, so no worries about accidentally selling a rental book back to your school. In fact, Chegg won over the campus bookstore, as I am *stillI* waiting on a book that I need tomorrow from the school.

They included a pre-paid return label, and directions to just return the books in the same box at the end of the semester. Convenient!  And all the books were the correct editions, as I ordered them.

Will update everyone again at the end of the semester!

Chegg’s slogan? “Don’t buy it.”

As I mentioned yesterday, I have seven books to buy for fall semester – which would total $515 to purchase new from the bookstore, or $419 used. Instead, I only bought one book from the school, because it wasn’t available used anywhere.

The other six were rented from Chegg.com, a textbook rental service. The premise is simple – you find the books you need for class and choose a rental period (I chose the full semester, so I don’t have to return them until December 21st) and then select a shipping method. All your books come to you, you use them all semester and send them back. The advantage is that a rental costs less than buying used. In some cases it is only $10 less, but for two I saved over $30 each on the used price.

There are disadvantages:

• You can’t write in the books
• Although highlighting is okay if you highlight like most college students (ie: every other line) you can’t return the book. However, I learn better by re-writing, so I never write or highlight in my books.
• There is a shipping fee, but for the six books I got the total shipping was $12.74 (to arrive within 4-7 days)

In the end, the total for the six books rented from Chegg and one book purchased from ASU, as well as shipping for both orders, I paid $320.

Total savings compared to buying all used from ASU: $99
Total savings compared to buying all new from ASU: $195

Fall semester starts for me on the 24th, so that meant it was time to login to the ASU system and look at my book list. It was looking pretty brutal going over the list – I’m taking 2 difficult lecture courses (OCHEM and Developmental Anatomy), the lab for DA and a writing-intensive online course. Total number of books? Seven. Plus an OCHEM modeling kit and the dissection kit for lab.

So, for the first time ever, I considered not getting books from the school bookstore. I always spend between $400-600 each semester, and at the end am able to sell back less than half of my books for less than $100. It’s infuriating and frustrating, and so I turned to Google to search out alternatives.

Online used textbook stores – Their pricing for used copies was $1-$10 less than getting used at ASU, which came out to a savings of about $60 overall. But then there was shipping, which averaged $10 across the board. Saving $50 is cool, but I wanted more. Read the rest of this entry »