Protip: Don’t buy a $330 textbook if the same book can be read for free via a legitimate source (i.e. Google Books).

So I successfully completed another one of those laser-focused eight-week classes. I had been planning to bypass Business Law & Ethics by taking an equivalent CLEP exam, but unfortunately, that exam only covers lower-level classes, and since my degree plan requires an upper-level class, I had to take this class instead of bypassing it using an easy test and a dozen hours of self-study.

I actually got a better experience relying on Google Books instead of plopping down the big bucks for the physical textbook. A handful of pages in the book were unavailable in Google’s “preview,” but since there were a couple of different editions available on Google Books (as well as a competing text from another publisher that covers the same material), I had a greater variety of material to study. If I needed to look over a particular term that was missing from the preview, everything important was included in the professor’s PowerPoints (which were downloadable on my class site) or good ol’ Wikipedia.

Lest this sound like a sonnet of self-congratulation, take this as a lesson for any college/university students (or high schoolers who have to furnish their own books) here: Free resources are nice. Use them. Don’t smack down the big bucks for an overpriced textbook you’ll use only once until you’ve verified that free alternatives (online or in your library system) don’t exist.

Definitely cannot beat free.
You get the info you need/want, and don't have to shell out dough out the ass to get it. (And I hear those textbooks can get expensive as hell too.)

you know, i actually had a biology professor for a few classes who outright said that the book wasn't required for the class. he put all the stuff he wanted us to study on the powerpoints, anyway, so i never bought the book.

i've also used google books for research on papers. i'd prefer to have a book in hand for this sort of thing because i can use an index, but my university doesn't have a big library. often, i can't find the book i'm looking for through there, but google books will have it for whatever reason