• plz1@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Our profit margin demands you buy over-priced books from our shop

    College material monopolies should be illegal, just like all other monopolies. Want to give students an education in the real world? Let the free market determine textbook prices.

  • theedqueen@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I had a stats professor who told us to not buy the book. He would print out hand outs and gave them to us every class. He was super nice. One time a girl brought her bunny to class because she had to give it medicine on a schedule and he made her do show and tell lol.

  • azimir@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    I often usually post the chapters we use for my classes in case students haven’t bought the book yet. I also have a hard $60 limit for books that I use.

  • DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I once had a class where, day one, the professor said something like, “If you don’t want to buy the book, that’s fine with me. I can’t tell you where to find a copy, but maybe one of your classmates can.” Someone raised their hand and started rattling off a few useful websites.

  • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This reminds me of when Weird Al told Canadian (or maybe Australian?) fans who wanted to watch his movie, “there’s Very Probably No way to do this. I know you probably have a TORRENT of questions, but I don’t have time to answer them right now.”

    • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge To break international copyright law By downloading MP3’s from file sharing sites Like Morpheus or Grokster or LimeWire or KaZaA

  • TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    A creative way to tell a student how to download a free book while telling them “not to”. The professor probably just wants to teach and is as tired of the university bullshit as the students.

  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    I love how he doesn’t even bother trying to consistently maintain the facade. It’s a *Chef’s Kiss

  • brokenlcd@feddit.it
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    7 months ago

    I have had uni professors sign books to make sure people actually bought new books and not used ones (he wrote them); unfortunately for him i had access to toluene to get pen ink off; did the same to all of my peers; Fuck those kind of professors

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        7 months ago

        He threatened you to either buy a new book or he would make your uni career hell, one of my mates did it, at the last exam he sent him back 5 times, the last time he went to take the exam the coordiator said “what else have you got to ask to him; he told you everything in your course; [insert name] give me the paper” he signed the paper and sent him off; the prof. Still gave him only 60/100.

        I still want to slap that piece of shit.

        After that i taught other people in the uni to do that; he tried to mitigate by writing over the printed title of the book; hoping that any tampering would be evident; toluene didn’t touch the toner, so it didn’t work

        Edit: grammar mistake (thanks mac)

        • yetAnotherUser@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          Do Italian professors know their students’ names? Over here, two countries to the North, no professor knows anything about their students.

          • Mora@pawb.social
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            7 months ago

            If you mean Germany: Depends. At my smaller university quite a few professors knew my name and others had something I would consider a friendship.

        • puppy@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Sounds like a pos.

          Also that sounds very illegal, no complaints have been filed or anything?

          • brokenlcd@feddit.it
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            7 months ago

            Here in italy no one gives a quater of a fuck about that kind of shit. Good thing is that the same can be said when after the last exams he always needs to call a tow truck since he won’t have tires, not even cameras were able to stop them, and i’m quite sure other professors turn a blind eye to them since they also hate him.

        • Mac@mander.xyz
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          7 months ago

          hi 👋

          just fyi:
          “teach” is one of those words in English that has a different suffix for it’s past-tense: it is “taught”.
          Eg. “They taught me to sew.”
          “teached” is improper.

          Note: not to be confused with “taut” which is pronounced the same.

          :)

          • brokenlcd@feddit.it
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            7 months ago

            I had originally wrote taught but i confused it with “pulling something tight” so i went with what would get the point across even if it was wrong.

            Edit: fixed it now

            • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              7 months ago

              No judgment, I think its interesting the little high-stakes decisions we make like this though.

              “Oh no which spelling is it? Is there time to search it up? Oh no my train of thought is fading! Send send send!”

          • assa123@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            Thank you for pointing out a mistake in a very polite way while being informative. You deserve an applesauce for making a better internet 👏.

    • orb360@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Buy/collect used books off students after they finish the course… Remove the ink, resell undercutting him by a ton and make a huge profit!

    • stoicwisesigma@thelemmy.club
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      7 months ago

      You know what I also hate? When professors take your phone while in class. I had a professor that did that back in my days of gender studies college and he saw nudes of my they/them girlfriend at the time. Mannn it was an awkward rest of the class and he didn’t tell anyone, but I really showed him, ended up taking the day off next day and nailed his wife. Dude never found out or anything, turns out her wife has had countless orgies with several other guys while he’s busy at school teaching students. Still never confirmed whether he found out or not.

      Overall, lost my train of thought, in response to your comment they do it to be sure you have the most recent information in the book, don’t see an issue tbh.

      • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        The specific case here was the professor had a financial stake in new books being sold.

        I do agree updated editions with new information could be important, but again when theres a financial incentive to sell new books, the obvious lean will be towards making new versions even if there is no new information.

        Since the books can be required, they should be required to show proof they have substantially added to their edition or else relegate it to a minor revision (maybe adding sub-editions like 1.0, 1.1, 1.2; where you only need the first number to be current). Right now its a whole lot of, “Trust us you need this book and the only pre-owned versions are out of date”.

        As a side thought, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if they use the book costs to weed out those that will not allow themselves to be abused to that degree. This would leave only those who would conform to their leader/manager/teacher and are less likely to try to change the system.

    • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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      7 months ago

      Side note: to anyone looking to follow this method, please try to limit the amount of toluene you are exposed to by wearing gloves and working in a well ventilated space. It can do dirty shit to your nervous system and I’ve seen chemists start to experience symptoms from relatively little exposure to the fumes.

      • brokenlcd@feddit.it
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        7 months ago

        In general if you can get a respirator or at least an n95 mask if you still have them from covid(apparently that doesnt work); also make tries on an old book before going on the good one, at least if you mess up it isn’t another hole punched in your wallet

        • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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          7 months ago

          A respirator with an organic vapor trap will work, but an N95 will do essentially nothing for chemical vapors besides give you a false sense of safety.

          If you have nothing, do your work outside and don’t work with your face directly over areas with the toluene.

  • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    A professor of mine sent me a similar email when I said I was having trouble accessing some journals through the University library portal:

    “One should definitely not use Sci-hub, if you catch my drift.”