Textbooks.
Generally, as students, we do not like them. They are expensive, mostly useless and you have to sacrifice most of your day standing in line just to buy them! But do you know how they get worse? By making loose-leaf textbooks.
I do not know how many of you have had the misfortune of having one of these paged inconveniences, but they are fairly prevalent in STEM and business majors.
I personally am on my second one, even after attempting to tactically avoid them. You may ask, “What is so bad about them?” Well, there are a few things I find troubling.
First of all, you can not turn more than about 15 pages at a time without either ripping the pages or the pages not turning at all. I know this sounds like a minor inconvenience (maybe even a first world problem), and it is, but it gets worse.
Say you want to check your answers in the back of the book. Well, you better cancel your plans for the evening. However, my larger problem lies in the concept of loose-leaf textbooks.
When you buy your loose-leaf textbook, it comes as just a neat stack of paper policed by some shrink wrap.
And that is it. Binder sold separately.
Then they have the audacity to try and tell you that they’re doing you a favor. They say, “Look! Loose-leaf textbooks! You can take out any pages at a time to write on them in any way you want!”
Shouldn’t a loose-leaf be less expensive, since it is made of less material? You would think, right? But no.
What Pearson is really telling us is, “We are going to sell you less of a textbook, without a binder, and still charge you the same amount. What are you going do about it?” It would be like if you went to a restaurant, ordered a chicken parmesean, and about 45 minutes later, the waiter came out with a knife, a tomato and a live chicken, and smiled and said, “Well, have at it. Bon appetit. Oh, wait, and you will have to buy your own plates. That will be $20.”
You would be outraged, and now you have a new pet chicken, and pet chickens, much like loose-leaf textbooks, are useless.
In all seriousness, loose-leaf textbooks are a problem, and make learning more difficult for students, especially those that lack the attention span required to pedal through pages of a loose-leaf textbook. Pearson and other textbook companies would be wise to eliminate this difficult part of student life from their product lines.
James Halbrook is a sophomore chemical engineering major from Brandon.
