Love It/Hate It: Buying New Textbooks for Class

Love It: Invest in Some Books, Invest in Yourself.—Annette Kim ‘25

It’s true, having to buy new books for your classes each semester can leave a dent in your bank account, but, seriously, you can’t invest a few bucks in yourself? Come on, what happened to #selfcare? Don’t be such a pessimist and think of all the amazing opportunities that come with buying new books for class.

For those who love a good meet cute, this is a fantastic opportunity to meet someone or maybe the one. Imagine this: you walk into a cute bookstore (i.e. the Coop) and search for a textbook with an extremely niche title written by none other than the professor of your 9 a.m. Gen Ed. After minutes of searching for the book, you finally spot it, and as you reach for the shelf, you find yourself holding hands with a beautiful stranger that you recognize from class. Sparks fly and suddenly that 9 a.m. doesn’t seem too bad anymore.

If you’re more professionally inclined, buying new books is the perfect way to ~network~. Not an econ major and not sure how it works? Here’s a quick little tutorial: Step 1, add the entire Harvard student population to your LinkedIn (if you don’t have a Linkedin, what are you even doing?). Step 2, message each person individually, ask if they have ever taken your course, and offer them the opportunity to sell you their old books (the key is to make it seem like you're the one doing them a favor). Step 3, you just earned yourself a pat on the back. Now your Linkedin is poppin’ AND you have new textbooks.

Do you need another reason to buy new books? Consider this: purchasing your textbooks can even help you stay fit. No matter what your athletic abilities are, buying new books is the perfect way to spice up your workout. You can use your new textbooks as weights for your squats, lunges, RDLs — the list goes on. Grab your new weights and get your sweat on! New semester, new you! So, sure, you may be spending money on these books, but what you lose financially will be compensated by what you gain romantically, socially, and even physically!

Hate It: Stop Gatekeeping—Hayeon “Rachel” Ok ‘25

Y’all should be grateful I even make it to class and pay tuition, and now you want me to drop more money on textbooks? I am internally crying as I drop $92 for a textbook I know for certain will only be opened once (maybe twice if I’m lucky) in the whole semester. Will that textbook make me look smart as I walk out of that bookstore? Maybe. Will it give me a sense of academic validation as it sits on my desk? Perhaps. But is it truly necessary for the progress of my academics, especially in this day and age of technology? If the textbook I am being forced to read to pass a class is not readily available online, I should be able to exercise the right of saying that the information is either outdated or being unfairly gatekept.

Also, I do not appreciate the internal panic that arises when all the copies of the textbook are sold out in the Coop, and I have to spend the next few hours scouring the internet for a *totally* legal PDF or cheap copy from Amazon. Please, spare me the trouble and the mental breakdown.

Here’s a fun little game to play: if a class requires a textbook, check the author list of the book. Nine out of 10 times, your professor’s name will be included. No hate, but if you wrote the textbook, then maybe you’ll be nice enough to provide it for free…? Just a thought, please don’t fail me.

To finish, let me provide a list of actual essentials that I could be purchasing instead of my textbooks: late-night Kung Fu Tea, tissues to accompany my p-set grinds, Spotify premium for an uninterrupted walk back to the Yard after missing my SEC shuttle, and a plane ticket back home.