(Photo by: Baptiste Raffin)

Every semester, the daunting trip to the bookstore sneaks up on every Cavalier. This fall season is especially chilling with the recent availability of winter textbooks. Soon, the question of “to rent, or not to rent?” will become the talk of the campus. Should you put your wallet through purchasing books, or have less freedom with rental books? Luckily, Alyssa Gann, the bookstore’s morning shift lead, has tips and tricks to get you through this daunting time.

When renting textbooks for the semester, you can save hundreds of dollars per textbook, but that does unfortunately limit the freedom you have with the book. Some erased pencil writing is acceptable when returning, but be mindful not to fill more than 40 percent of the book.

“Renting is also really nice because if you’re taking, say, a biochemistry class and you’re not going to need the book afterwards, you won’t have it laying around in your house just collecting dust,” Gann said.

Buying books allows you to keep them, so you have the ability to write or highlight in them, which can be really beneficial for note-taking and studying.

The bookstore offers rentals for almost every required textbook and kits for classes like geology. This is just another way the bookstore keeps things easy and low-cost. One thing that is unfortunately less simple would be the book pickup time.

“Probably around the day that they become available would be the best time. But if we’re looking at things like fall rush and stuff like that, it’s probably a better idea to come in before the week that school starts,” Gann said.

Gann asks that you make sure your rental return is processed when using a drop box and that you write your student ID number and name on the rental sticker on the front of the book.