Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Books to buy (Compulsory this semester)

I was discussing with my friend, the best places in Chennai to buy pirated books and suddenly remembered the college days.

During my 2 years course, there was always a list of books that the college wanted us to buy compulsorily. Each one of us either had to place orders through the college, or buy a copy and that copy should be shown to the coordinator. He/She is said to note this and add it up to our internal marks!!! Anything that the students were supposed to do in the curriculam, was directly or indirectly and sometimes proportionately linked to the internal marks.

The college authorities took all this trouble to make sure that no single soul has been individually deprived of the knowledge and literature that the book provides. (its a pun... please!)

But in fact, these 'compulsory' books are the ones that are never, ever actually taught or used in the actual curriculam. To prove this to you, I will just give you the names of few compulsory books that we had to buy for the second semester; 'Power of positive thinking'. 'Case studies in Accounting'. Case studies! in accounting!! can you believe it?? Not even once during the classes were these books mentioned. Anyway, you get what i meant, right?

We being sensible hostelites (ahem), never really saw the reason to have more than one copy per 5 of us, or maybe 7 of us. Of course, there were few students who would buy each and every prescribed book and read it cover to cover. I dont mean them, I am talking about normal people, like me ;)

One of us would buy a pirated copy of the book and take it to the coordinator to show him/her and then hand it over to the next in waiting and that person would do the same and this will continue till all of us were convinced that our internal marks are safe. The bright part of this was, when I vacated the hostel, I did not have to carry away too many books. All my books fitted in to one compact cardboard box.


2 comments:

R R R said...

BOOKS in college!! i don remember anything like that ;) LOL

and whats that "If you care to know" near About Me in the page??

Alin said...

for that matter, when did you attend the classes anyway. you were out all the time. I am talking abt sincere students, like me ;)

LOL!!!

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