Book buy-back and perception vs. reality.

12.16.00
: Well, this is by no means a unique thought. In fact, it is one that virtually every college student thinks around this time of year: that book buyback is a terrible deal to us students. At the beginning of the semester we shell out big bucks to buy our books, and then they give us (at BEST) only half of that? That in itself is messed up. But then you have to figure that they aren't even passing the difference off to us with their used books. I know that the used books I buy never have more than 25% discount off the new price. So you have to figure that we're basically getting ripped off at both ends. I'm not even mentioning how over-priced the books are in the first place. It's things like this that make me want to form a student-run used book trading group. I think it would be more fair that way. I know that a lot of us have had this idea, so we should make it happen somehow...

12.20.00
: You know, I think that in the battle versus perception and reality, sometimes I would like to just stick with my perception even if it is wrong. What I mean to say is that when I imagine something, I would rather go along with the made-up theory than with reality. For example, if you see someone on the street frantically fussing with something on the ground, only to walk away in a huff seconds later, it is cooler to imagine that he is a spy planting some devious device into the ground, rather than learning that it was just a nervous tourist tying his shoes. I think that in most instances like this, your imagination is much more interesting than reality.

However, with people's lives this becomes a bit more sketchy. It is always better to learn more about someone's real lives than to just make up some life story for them. But it is also pretty hard to deal with the news that someone who you thought you knew has changed drastically. Maybe I'm just trying to justify my reactions to that situation. Maybe it's that when any perception lasts long enough, it eventually will become, in essence, your reality...and when this "reality" is shattered, I believe it would just have been easier to fall back on your perceptions than to have learned the truth. Either way, it is a pretty fine line, since you would be sacrificing somebody else's true personality simply to hold intact your fragile view of your surroundings. At what point does it become alright to make up somebody else's life to suit your own?