A tale of woe, that chills the heart of any mortal man.

Gather round, students, get close to the warmth of the campfire. Desperately tired Bwogger Levi Cohen has a tale of despair for you all…

It’s the middle of February, the grayest of months. You’ve managed to get into something of a routine with all of your classes. Sure, your Global Core seminar has upwards of 100 pages of reading per week in PDFs, but so what? You’ve come this far in your Columbia career. Every week, you faithfully open Canvas and download whatever documents your professor wants you to read. You might skim one or two—surely no one in the class is reading everything? Except maybe that one girl. There’s always that one girl.

Yet one chilly, gray day, everything changes. You’re slipping on your coat, your gloves, your protective armor against the bitter New York wind—you give a cheerful wave across the table to a girl you only see once a week in this seminar. (After this class, you’ll never see her again.) Suddenly, the professor calls out—”Hold on a moment,” he says, and everyone freezes. A boy’s hand leaves the doorknob. All wait to hear what he has to say.

“I’ve decided that I want you to buy the full text of—” your professor says. You don’t hear anything else. Your world spins, like that old Mr. Krabs meme. His voice echoes in your head. But he’s already posted the first four chapters, in full, as PDFs on Canvas, you tell yourself. A benevolent god wouldn’t let him change his mind like this. You turn to the heavens. WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, you shout in your head. The professor is explaining his reasoning. The latter half of the book makes good points… will draw a nice contrast to what we discuss in Week 8…

You leave the classroom shell-shocked. You are numb. For the rest of your day, you wander about aimlessly. Food is tasteless. Coffee ineffective. Even your last-ditch method of waking up—staring at Uris and contemplating how an architect could possibly design such a monstrosity—does nothing. Finally, your last class (its syllabus mercifully stable) ends, and you steel yourself.

You descend to the Columbia Bookstore. You walk backwards towards the textbook section. A store employee stares at you quizzically: who needs a textbook this late in the semester? She’s right. She’s right.

The man at the desk smiles blandly as you tell him of your woes. With shaking hands, you page through your syllabus until you find the title of the book. You give it to him; he types on his computer.

“I’m sorry, it doesn’t look like an order for that book was put in,” he says.

You fall to your knees. You are defeated. Maybe you’ll try Book Culture, but if he didn’t order it at the school bookstore, why would he order it there? And the subject is too obscure for the PDF to be floating around any bootleg websites…

“You could always purchase it as an ebook,” the employee says. You weep. You groan. You beat your breast and rend your clothing.

You never get the book, and you Pass/D/Fail the class.

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