Saphhous

Federal loans

I just got my annual statement from the federal loan people. I owe about a third of what I thought I was in for ... I really thought I owed nearly $30k by now. But I'm sitting at just $11k, and my loan amount should decrease in the upcoming years. I could graduate law school and be less in debt than it costs for one year at BU. Crazy.

Well, classes start today. I have History 102 (gen-ed) from 9-10 and Public Relations from 10-11 MWF; TR I have Intro to Mass Comm from 8-9:15 and Crime and Justice in the U.S. from 9:30 to 10:45. Whoo-hoo. I don't work Mondays (except today), and the rest of the week I work 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

I applied for a job at CNET. If I'm lucky, I'll be making $25,000+ with benefits here soon. No exact figure on the salary yet, but it wouldn't be bad, I'm sure. And they offer tuition reimbursement, so with any luck I can drop to part-time after this semester, get CNET to foot the bill and take my $4,000 in KEES money to the bank. Plus, if I can get them to pay for law school, that'd be sweet. I can study IP/TM/copyright/DMCA/DRM and they could still use me. I'm even going to pitch a tech-related law blog idea to them, since they have about a million blogs already, but I don't think that's one of them. That'd be fun. It's such a large company that my opportunities for lateral and vertical advancement are almost limitless. I'd get healthcare, dental and vision insurance; paid vacation (two weeks) and holidays (15 paid); 10 paid sick days; a 15 percent discount on buying stocks ... Oh, and they have this crazy vacation thing where if, at the end of the year, you have less than 40 hours of vacation time left, they give you an extra 8 hours the next year.

There's other cool stuff, too. Plus it's just a cool place to work. Cross your fingers.

My 12-year-old stepdaughter just analyzed my choice of underwear. I'm not sure what to think.

Textbooks

Hopefully by now you guys all know you don't have -- and really shouldn't -- buy your textbooks at the on-campus stores. Then again, I've also found you rarely need the books anyway, and libraries often have ones you can borrow. That said, check out Cheapest Textbooks for an easy way to find the cheapest online textbook prices. It's easier than searching on Amazon and Half.com, and compares prices and shipping for you. Pretty sweet.

My cost for textbooks this semester: $32. Two books were available through my college library and all the others I know I'll never read. I bought one that seemed interesting.