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| Tuesday, April 03, 2007 |
| Not Cutting, but RIPPING |
I have always resisted the idea of cutting my law school books.* Resisted is perhaps too mild of a word. I have been REPULSED by the concept. DISGUSTED, even.
Today, however, I said, "fuck it." I had International Law and IP to bring home, and the Int'l Law book is the size of a Cadillac. It's a used book (my first), and my professor made it clear that he can't use it again after this year - the damned thing hasn't been updated since 9/11 -- and it's on International Law. Hello?
So today, not having a razor blade with me, I just yanked the pages I needed out of the book. Ripped them. They're all jagged, and you can see where I came close to mussing with the text.
I think I'm gonna go read my pages now. Just so that it was worth while.
I think I'm gonna look funny in class tomorrow - looking on with my jagged-edged pages, rather than the big giant book.
*Despite my attempts, I could not find the past posts referring to this process. When I was entering my second year of school, a few blog authors were talking about it -- where you literally cut the spines off your books so that you can carry around only the pages you need. Some people do it themselves, others take the books to a copy shop, and have them chopped up there. I didn't see how it would work out for me - first of all, b/c I'd lose all hte pages, second of all, because my professors ALWAYS write the syllabus so I'm reading from 3 different sections of the book at a time.Labels: books, law school |
posted by Zuska @ 4:27 PM   |
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| 1 Comments: |
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What you have to do is buy several binders, one for each book and one for all your assignments for the week (or two weeks). Then invest in a couple of packs of dividers--get some that are different, to go between the pages for each different book or class, and some that are cheap, to go between non-continuous assignments from a single class or book.
If you cut your books yourself, the best way is to use an Exacto to cut the front and back covers off, then either cut or pull the binding off. Then you might have to spend some time pulling glue off the pages before hole punching them.
Your better bet is to find a local copy shop, though (Kinko's has been balking on doing book cutting for me lately) and have them do both the cutting and hole punching.
Then put all the pages from one book into one binder. Then pull out the pages for the week's assignments, inserting a plain divider whereever you've taken out pages.
Then put the pages you've pulled out in the "all in one" binder, adding plain dividers between non-continuous sections of pages.
So your all in one binder might have a special divider labeled "Con Law" followed by three sections of pages, separated by dividers, for the three non-continuous assignments you have in Con Law. Then another special binder called "Trusts and Estates" followed by the same thing--the reading assignments, separated by dividers.
Helpful? I don't cut my books every semester, and since I bought a rolling backpack, I may never do so again. But it's a good thing to try out if you are tired of hauling your books around.
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What you have to do is buy several binders, one for each book and one for all your assignments for the week (or two weeks). Then invest in a couple of packs of dividers--get some that are different, to go between the pages for each different book or class, and some that are cheap, to go between non-continuous assignments from a single class or book.
If you cut your books yourself, the best way is to use an Exacto to cut the front and back covers off, then either cut or pull the binding off. Then you might have to spend some time pulling glue off the pages before hole punching them.
Your better bet is to find a local copy shop, though (Kinko's has been balking on doing book cutting for me lately) and have them do both the cutting and hole punching.
Then put all the pages from one book into one binder. Then pull out the pages for the week's assignments, inserting a plain divider whereever you've taken out pages.
Then put the pages you've pulled out in the "all in one" binder, adding plain dividers between non-continuous sections of pages.
So your all in one binder might have a special divider labeled "Con Law" followed by three sections of pages, separated by dividers, for the three non-continuous assignments you have in Con Law. Then another special binder called "Trusts and Estates" followed by the same thing--the reading assignments, separated by dividers.
Helpful? I don't cut my books every semester, and since I bought a rolling backpack, I may never do so again. But it's a good thing to try out if you are tired of hauling your books around.