High Cost of Textbooks - Revision

It all goes back to the beginning of college. I had to be careful with my money or I wouldn't have enough for textbooks. Sometimes I would have to decide between buying a full meal versus just getting an Apple or no food at all. On top of tuition costs, my books could be as much as one of my classes. I find it difficult for someone to pay for rent, food, and bills without debt when tuition and textbooks cost so much. This has made it increasingly difficult to pay for school and books over the years. 

I have paid for school by working part time at minimum wage jobs and struggling through the week to week grind of homework and work. Which is why it is rigorous to pay for school and textbooks. Honestly no one wants to work for minimum wage but as my parents have always reminded me, you start at the bottom not the top. Which is why I go to school in the first place, so I can do something I love and make more money doing it. On top of making minuscule money every term, I was required to get the newest textbooks, which were hardly used since everything is on the internet. On top of this, when I went to book buybacks to try to get money back, they wouldn't accept the books since there was already a new edition. 

 There can be new editions of books, but there can't be new editions of the internet, which is why I prefer the internet over textbooks. Often times I find myself using the internet over textbooks since the internet has vastly diverse information from a variety of people, as compared to textbooks that only use a few authors. In my opinion, books are outdated. I believe that textbooks are outdated because they have few effective examples to interact with the reader and I find that most are dull to read. Videos are more useful than textbooks because you see someone go through the process to either solve a problem or explain a difficult concept. If books are inferior then why do they cost so much more than free resources like the internet?  

Textbook costs have increased over the years and there is little reason for this in my opinion, other than to make more money. The same textbooks are just re-printed over and over again and they just label them as a new edition. There is little information that changes in the textbooks, typically the only changes that are made are the questions or the order of the questions. What other alternatives do we have as a student? Why aren't there any e-textbook alternatives that we can use that cost less money and don't have to be carried around everywhere? These should be simple solutions to a problem that we have all had. What about the companies that choose what price to put on books. 

 It seems unusual to me that the prices books are listed at are regulated by the book companies that publish these books. Shouldn't there be a committee of some sorts that looks to see if the information in the book has actually changed to constitute charging so much for books? Committees should be a group of people that don't have monetary interest in what is trying to be sold, but have knowledge on the product. While committees can help reduce the price of required textbooks, what are our professors doing to help make life easier on their students. 

Why not have professors use older versions of the textbook or a PDF of the newest textbook. Perhaps teachers can't give out a copy of the book because they will get in trouble by their superiors, which makes me question how the hierarchy of our schooling system works. How much choice do our professors actually have in what textbooks we use in class? It's not only the professors, but students also need to voice their opinions and say that high textbooks costs are not acceptable. Through the collected effort of teachers and students together we can lower book prices and make living more affordable for students. 

Notes: changed some sentence structure and vocabulary. Reworded and added sentences to all the paragraphs except the first  paragraph. Expanded on previous ideas and tried to make sentences flow from one to another.

Blog post 4

   I had just gotten off the bus and was walking down my driveway. As I entered the doorway my parents were waiting in the living room, which typically didn't happen unless something bad had happened. I sat down in the living room, wondering what I had done, but it was nothing I had done. I was just told that my cousin had killed himself, I felt overwhelming emotions come in an instant. I will never forget the feeling of finding out that a relative had died, but more so when someone has ended their life earlier than what I had expected. I've had other relatives die, but to some extend you expect that older relatives will die eventually, but younger relatives like my cousin I expected to live as long as I will. It hurt me much more knowing that how much life he had to live, and how he ended everything in a few seconds. There is regret on my end that I didn't reach out to him more, or somehow prevented what happened, but I know I couldn't have known what he was going to do.
   The only person that could have known was my aunt, who adopted my cousin as a single mother. They lived in California, so only got to see him twice a year. in my opinion my aunt has some mental health issues, which most of the family agrees on. To this day I wonder if there was any kind of background check on her before she was allowed to raise a child, because she was not a fit single parent. Every time I went to their house she was yelling at my cousin, telling him he could do more and  needed to obey her in every way. Her dogs were treated as royalty while her son was a misunderstand boy with no one to turn to for affection. While she bought him plenty of things, objects can't fill the void of feeling unloved and we lived in another state so he had little family. Whenever he tried to come to Oregon his mom wouldn't allow it, but he was always welcome to come up. On top of all this he was constantly bullied at school and coped with this by vandalizing school property and joining the wrong crowd. Which led to him having to go to a border school to live at where he had no friends or family.
   I'd have to imagine that he felt like he was on an island with nobody on it, completely deserted and left out to dry. I know for a fact that when he came home he was yelled at and asked why he couldn't be a better son. Being compared to other people and made to feel worthless. Eventually one day he had enough and decided to go to the local basketball court at night and hang himself, not thinking of the consequences or who it would affect. I believe that in the end he loved his mom to the end of the world, and vise versa, but I can't comprehend how it feels to be adopted and never have a father figure in your life. I will never know what it's like to have terrible parents or go without feeling loved. There has to be another way other than suicide, and he had plenty of other options. His life was just beginning and he threw it all away, the possibilities were endless.
   That's the part that hurts me the most, the endless possibilities and the good times we had spent together. From going swimming at my aunt's house in California, to getting burritos downtown, yelling at the amusement park, and plenty of other memories. All of these memories came back to me at his funeral, and I will never forget the thousands of people at his funeral. He knew everyone in his town and didn't realize how many lives he had affected, neither did I. It was the most people I had seen at a funeral and if only he'd known how loved he was, he would be with me today. Everyone in the family misses him and there will never be someone to replace him. He had something that I don't, and that's the ability to connect with people with little effort.
   What we need to look at is that my aunt was not fit to raise a child alone, or may be not at all. I question how she was ever allowed to have a child, and that a father figure is important for any child's life. Perhaps the adoption agencies have changed over the years and I hope that they have. Also try to be there for family, make sure they know that you haven't forgotten them cause they could be gone in an instant. This was an important life lesson and I am still coping with the death of my cousin. Thanks for taking your time to read this I just felt like I needed to write a blog post about this topic.

Perspective

   Last class I was talking with my group project members. Our topic is going to be about the tension between North Korea and South Korea and how it affects different countries and people. Since I am from the United States I only know my perspective on the conflict between the Korea's. Now I know that my perspective is heavily influenced by American media, which is very biased, and I am shown little international news. I had a hard time understanding why China would want to make sure that nothing happens to North Korea. My two classmates that are from China explained to me that any missiles or fighting that happen in North Korea could also hit China since the two countries border each other. Also they told me that there are some Chinese citizens that live in North Korea and obviously no country wants its citizens to be harmed.
       This helped me to realize my ignorance in not realizing that the two countries have relations and its not as simple as just cutting off the relationship. I think that some of this stems from not being able to read articles from multiple news sources since I can only read one language and have the access to American news articles. In some ways the news creates propaganda to convince you of their side without explaining all the different perspectives that countries might have for their choices. My other classmate Daiki explained to me that there are several US military camps in Japan and that there could be missiles or fighting that happen in Japan just because US troops are occupied in Japan. I knew that there were troops in Japan but it never occurred to me that Japan could get caught up in this fiasco just because of that.
      Basically what I'm trying to say is that I need to keep a more open mind and think of situations from different peoples perspectives before making any conclusions. I think that most of the American populous can relate to this since on a daily basis I hear such ignorant people saying that the solution is just blow up North Korea and its that simple. Most of these people give little thought to the people that will be affected and that there has to be a better solution.