A Guide to Surviving College

Kate — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:50:15 +0000

Kate is a guest poster from the blog Arguing with a Doughnut. It’s just as weird as this post.

Congratulations! You have been accepted into college! NOW WHAT?

Now you will experience everything you’ve ever dreamed of, right? Almost! Almost. While college definitely has a lot of “fun” going for it, there are an awful lot of pitfalls, differences, and out-and-out lies that you’re going to have to figure out as you go.

UNLESS.

You read this.

First, let’s cover your dorm room. It will not look like this:

It will look like this:

Brace yourself. Don’t go out and buy a lot of stuff; there won’t be any room for it. Equip yourself as if you’re going to prison because that’s about the amount of space you’ll have. If you think you’ll have room for a craft corner or a bookshelf made out of anything but hastily wrought IKEA furniture from failed and abandoned efforts to have “real” furniture and cinderblocks, you’re sadly mistaken.

Eventually, you’ll need to crack a book.

Don’t forget to buy your text books.

Buy them online. Forget the campus bookstore. Just FORGET IT.

Texts online are cheaper, way cheaper, easier to get, and not a waste when you resell (or keep!) them. Just get the book list as soon as you can, either by e-mailing your professor or by hacking the internet until you find a syllabus for the class and stealing it covertly for the sole sake of saving a few cents.

Once you have your books, you will want to study need to study.

You will also want to make sure you aren’t accidentally trying to live the lies you were told about college. For example, the brochure image? This one?

Yeah. About that. You’re going to school HERE:

Or, if you’re in the North East?

And remember when you thought you could get up and wear pajamas to class?

You can’t.

And finally, one last sage piece of wisdom…

Walk very, very carefully when you get your diploma.

What is an ISBN?

Olivier Hubert — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:58:58 +0000

Anyone who has ever looked at the back cover of a book has probably noticed the numbers above or below the bar code where it is written ISBN. What exactly do those numbers represent? Well, the ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a unique number that identifies almost every modern book. The ISBNs are managed by the ISO consortium under the standard ISO-2108. The number is 10 or 13 digits long, depending if the book was published before 2007 or not. Although most books have an ISBN, they are not required by law, except in some countries, to have one. Also, the ISBN was first implemented in 1970 so books published before that time do not have an ISBN.

How can an ISBN be of use to someone searching for books? Well since it uniquely identifies a book (or an edition of a book), it makes searching for one a lot easier. A vast majority of libraries reference books by their ISBN so if you are searching locally for a book, you can, for example, call all used books bookstores of your area and ask if they have that ISBN in stock. Using online search engines, entering the ISBN instead of the title or author really speeds up the search.

For reference:

Cheap textbooks and other issues that interest college students blog » finding books

A Guide to Surviving College

What is an ISBN?