Buying Textbooks

If there is one piece of advice that applies to all incoming college freshmen is do not buy textbooks at the university store. Do not buy textbooks at a brick and mortar store period.

There are many different avenues to obtain textbooks that buying a textbook from the university store should be the last resort. Facebook marketplace, half.com, amazon.com and many other online sellers offer the same books for much less. If you can get away with getting an earlier edition of the book, do it, you will often save 90% from buying the most current edition.

Of course there are times when the textbooks are even needed at all. Many times professors assign textbooks, but assign no homework from it. These books are hardly ever referenced in class, and you can get away with just studying lecture notes that you take.

Lastly, every major university has a vast library system that are full of books. Your library may easily have books that are the required textbooks for a certain class, so make sure to check them out before someone else gets that idea. And if for any reason your library does not have the book you need, chances are you have a free ILL system. The ILL system will allow you to request any book your library does not own, and another library will send your library the book for you to check out free of charge (depending on where you go).

So please save your money, and explore many other options before you go and purchase books for full price at a university textbook store.

A Little Side Diversion

Of course I have other interests besides materials science and engineering, as you guys reading will soon learn. Lately, I've been watching Kitchen Nightmares and came across a certain scene that reminded me deeply of the printer scene in Office Space.

I just had to put the music to the Kitchen Nightmares scene and I came up with this.

Introduction to Polymers

Hey all,

Testing a way to post my old lecture notes. Lets see if it works.

Introduction to Polymers
Text we used for this class was Essentials of Polymer Science and Engineering
Lecture 1 by Dr. Qibing Pei

Lecture1.pdf

New Blog

Greetings,

I am currently set to graduate and earn a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and I wish to use my knowledge gained to help answer homework questions that you may have.

First I will try sorting out my old coursework and be posting it over time for viewing, I will also try and answer any questions that you email me (though as much as I would like to be right, I may be wrong too).

I wish to use this as a small test to help refresh the knowledge that I once had, and possibly help those looking to earn their degrees as well.

-jm