So far the only goals that I’ve been keeping up are my yoga one (I’m taking a yoga class this semester) and probably my 80% GPA one. And now I can add another one of my goals to that pitifully short list: upgrade my phone.

On Tuesday, I became the owner of an iPhone 4S. I know that in December, I said that I would probably go for a cheaper smartphone, but the multitude of apps available for the iPhone convinced me to go with it. I’ve already fallen in love with Instagram, as seen by the number of pictures that I’ve tweeted already (mostly of my cat).

My iPhone also completes my Apple trifecta. I already own an iPod touch and a Macbook Pro, both of which I couldn’t function without. My iPhone is my third Apple product, and I’m already very attached to it. I guess this means that I’m an official Apple fangirl. I will be accepting my Apple cult membership card now.

I’ve also already named my new phone. I have a tradition of naming my Apple products after female musicians. My iPod’s name is PJ (after PJ Harvey), and my Macbook’s name is Fiona Apple. Following this tradition, I have named my iPhone Regina, after Regina Spektor. I think it’s quite fitting.

In other news, it’s Reading Week at my university (which is the equivalent of Spring Break/March Break at other schools), and I’m spending the second half of the week at my grandma’s place. This is why you are currently being spammed with cat pictures if you follow me on either Twitter or Tumblr. This is the first time I’ve seen my cat Cookie since Christmas, and I’m going a little nuts with my iPhone. These two things combined means taking ALL THE CAT PICTURES.

I’m hoping to get another blog entry up before the end of Reading Week, but that may not happen because I kind of left my laptop’s charger at school. I brought the extension cord for the charger, but not the charger itself. I ARE SO SMRT, I know. I have a WordPress app on my iPhone, but actually writing blog entries on it is kind of a pain in the ass. But we shall see.

Have you made any exciting purchases lately? Is your Reading Week/March Break/Spring Break more exciting than mine? Do you want to spam your cat pictures? Comment!

As I’ve mentioned several times on this blog before, I used to be a Christian, and a pretty devout one at that. For the past few days (particularly since writing my last blog entry), I’ve been reflecting on how exactly how became an apostate. I’ve realized that it was a fairly gradual process.

My grandmother raised me as Christian, beginning with having me baptized at some point before my first birthday. For most of my childhood, I went to church and Sunday school on a regular basis. During this time, I casually believed in God. I saw Him as grandfatherly man who loved me and wanted me to be good and wanted me to talk to him. I wanted to please him, so I prayed on a regular basis and did my best to follow the rules that my Sunday school teachers had told me about.

When I was 11 or 12, I starting hanging out with a girl that was also a Christian. By this point, my grandma and I stopped going to church regularly, so my friend convinced me to go start going to her church with her. Unlike the churches that my grandma and I gone to (which were more liberal), my friend’s church was much more like the stereotypical evangelical churches that are commonly associated with Christianity, except much smaller. The sermons at this church talked about how evil abortion and homosexuality were, and in my Sunday school classes, we studied a book that supposedly “refuted” the theory of evolution (I still have that book and recently reread it. Now that I have a basic understanding of evolutionary biology, I can safely say that it does not refute evolution). Being 12 years old and rather impressionable, I easily accepted everything that the church preached.

When I was 13, I went with the same friend to a church camp. By then, I was a fervent believer and being surrounded by other fervent believers only made me more so. I was on a “spiritual high” for a long time after that. I felt God’s presence in my life and wished that others could feel it as well.

But then God disappeared from my life.

Early in high school, I realized that I was attracted to women. At that time, I still considered myself to be a Christian. How could I be both a Christian and queer? For the past 2 years, I had been explicitly told that LGBTQ people were evil. If I was attracted to women, I had obviously done something wrong. I prayed every day, asking God for forgiveness and for him to make me straight.

Needless to say, it didn’t work.

When I realized that my prayers and sincere expressions of repentance were going unanswered, I began to question whether they had been heard in the first place. I began questioning why God that loved would make me suffer like this. At this point, completely separate from my sexuality issues, I began seeing the inconsistencies and logical issues in the Bible.

I also truly began to see how unlike Christ some Christians truly are. After realizing that I was gay, I became much more sensitive to the dehumanization of LGBTQ people that many Christians leaders subject us to. They accuse of all being child molesters, perverts, rapists. Instead of denouncing the discrimination that LGBTQ people face in every aspect of their lives, they help to perpetuate it.

Jesus would not approve and I did not want to be associated with that.

It was the culmination of all these things that slowly began my distancing from Christianity. Eventually, I realized that I no longer truly believed what I used to believe. In fact, I realized that I doubted the existence of a god entirely. I wasn’t a Christian anymore.

And that, my friends, is how a devout evangelical Christian becomes agnostic.

If you’ve read my About page, you’ll know that I was an evangelical Christian when I was younger. During this time, I took the concept of modesty very seriously. I even pinned the necklines of some of my dresses and shirts to make them less revealing. I refused to wear dresses, skirts, or shorts unless they were either hitting my mid-thigh or I had tights underneath. I believed that I had a duty to “not lead boys into sin.” I believed that I had more respect for my body than my classmates who were wearing more revealing clothes. Even after I left Christianity, I still felt uncomfortable wearing more revealing clothes for a long time even though I was no longer worried about “tempting” anyone.

About a month ago, I was getting ready to go to a friend’s birthday party. The plan was to pregame in my friend’s suite before heading to a bar downtown. Because we were going out, I wanted to wear something dressier and was trying different dresses and skirts. That’s when I found a dress that I hadn’t worn for a while. The dress’ neckline was pinned; it was one of the dresses that I had made more “modest” during my evangelical years.

I suddenly got really pissed off. Why I had been so preoccupied with “tempting” men? Why was it my responsibility to ensure that Christian guys didn’t sin? Why can’t those guys worry about their own salvation? I’m sure they’re perfectly capable of controlling their sex drives, so why do they need my help?

I took the pin out and tried the dress on. I could see why I had pinned it for “modesty” reasons; the neckline was fairly low. But I looked awesome. I realized that I was wrong all those years. Respecting your body has nothing to do with whether you cover it up or not. It’s about feeling good about it. If you the most confident about your body when you’re dressing modestly, more power to you. If you feel the most confident about your body when you’re barely wearing anything, great.

I was revealing some skin and feeling sexy because of it. I felt liberated.

I wore that dress to my friend’s party that night. Yeah, I wore tights under it, but not because I was concerned about the dress being too short, but because it was January in Guelph. I was using logic, not slut-shaming, to guide my clothing choices.

And that’s what “modesty” is: thinly veiled slut-shaming.

Guelph has delivered on that promise. During O-Week, the queer rights group on campus ran a few events. I met almost all of my current friends at the these events, and they’re all either queer themselves or straight allies. And everyone else that I have come out to on campus has been supportive (although I have purposely avoided coming out to people that I think might not be, such as a girl on my floor who is an evangelical Christian). I had succeeded in my goal of surrounding myself with people who supported me, and in my goal of finally living “the homosexual lifestyle”.

Spoiler alert: it is much like the “heterosexual lifestyle,” except with a Thursgay (aka queer night at one of the bars in Guelph) thrown in here and there. Oh, and I get to reference Effing Dykes in conversation and have my friends actually understand what I’m talking about.

ANYWAYS.

Needless to say, I’m much happier here than I was in the town that I grow up in because compared to that town, Guelph is a queer-friendly utopia. However, despite the acceptance of most students here, there’s still homophobia. Something that my friends and I experienced last week makes that clear.

Last Friday, some of my friends and I decided to go to a pub night thing that the agriculture students were running (the only real reason we decided to go to this was because it was all-ages and one of my friends with us is under 19). It was alright for the 15 minutes that we there before a couple of my friends got kicked out for a really stupid reason, but I was happy when we left because I would rather leave dancing to “Cotton Eye Joe” in my elementary school memories where they belong. While we leavingand walking to the buses to go a bar downtown, we saw a group of people standing around smoking right by the doors…and right by the sign that clearly said that smoking was prohibited within 9 metres of the doors. One of my friends called them out on it (I didn’t catch everything that she said, but it was something about being illiterate).

The group starting calling her things like bitch, slut, etc. And then my friend delivered her amazing line that I want to use myself someday: “At least I get more pussy than you do!”

AND that’s when the homophobic bullshit started. They definitely yelled “you lesbian whore” and probably said some other shit as well. Even though it definitely isn’t the first time I’ve experienced homophobia, it was still weird for me to be hearing it in Guelph.

But then my friends and I went downtown, got even more drunk, and danced with each other (yes, sometimes in a sexual manner). It was our “fuck you” to those homophobic idiots.

(Note #2: I am relatively new to the theory and issues surrounding modern feminism. Chances are, you’re more well-versed in this subject than I am. Please feel free to comment to correct me on anything that I mention, call me out on my unchecked privilege, etc.)

A couple weeks ago in my Couple and Family Relationships class, the professor was going over the various theories about how families interact with society. One of these theories was a feminist theory that states that societal policies and norms reinforce patriarchal views about the family. For example, paid maternity leave is usually a year long, but paid paternity leave (IF this an even an option for the father) is usually much less than that. This usually forces the mother to stay at home to take care of the newborn, even if the father had wanted to be the one to stay at home.

As the professor was explaining this theory, one girl put up her hand and said feminists were just whining and not doing anything about the issues that they’re complaining about. Needless to say, this pissed me off and got me ranting in my head about all the rights that women now have thanks to feminism, AND the inequality that still exists between men and women. Since then, I’ve noticed more and more people that have (and express) completely inaccurate views about feminism and about women’s rights in general. Views such as:

“Feminists hate men”

“Feminists want special rights”/”Feminism is sexist”

“Feminism was relevant 100 years ago, but not anymore”/”Men and women are equal now, so we don’t need feminism”

Please excuse me while I bang my head against this desk for 10 minutes.

OK, I’ve done my head-desking. Now let’s get into this.

That’s start with the most infuriating assumption about feminism: the whole “they just hate men” thing. I don’t hate men. At all. In fact, there are many men that I love and care about deeply. People like my grandfather, my soon-to-be stepfather, my friend Dan (who has been one of my best friends since we were 13), and my many other male friends.

However, I do believe that men enjoy many privileges that women do not have. This website has a good overview of those privileges. No, I don’t believe that any specific man is too blame for women not having these privileges. However, the societal constructs that have created these privileges need to be acknowledged and changed for women to be truly equal to men.

And, needless to say, there are many men who identify as feminists. Many more men are feminists but don’t identify themselves as one. If a man believes that women deserve all of the same rights, freedoms, and privileges that he enjoys, he is a feminist.

Now, on to “feminists want special rights.” No, I don’t want special rights. I want equal pay for equal work of equal value. I want my reproductive rights to be respected. I want my sexual freedom to be respected. I want rape culture to end. I want the same above mentioned privileges that men enjoy. None of these are “special rights.” They’re equal rights.

Finally, the whole “feminism isn’t relevant anymore” argument. This is one that I hear a lot. Yes, women’s rights have come a long way in the last century. Thanks to first and second-wave feminism, I enjoy the right to vote (and yes, I do exercise this right), the right to an education, the right to run to run for public office, the right to choose to have a family, a career, or both, and I am not seen as the property of any man. I am extremely grateful for the women that fought for these rights.

However, although women have made great strides toward equality with men, we are not still not there. We’re not even close. Here are just a few examples of inequalities that still remain:

Women in the workplace. In Canada (a country that I would argue is fairly liberal compared to the rest of the world when it comes to women’s issues), women are still being paid less than men for equal work of equal value. In 2008, Canadian men who worked year-round and full-time were paid an average of $62,600. That same year, Canadian women who worked year-round and full time were paid an average of $44,700 (Source). That translates to women making $0.71 for every dollar that a man made in 2008. This wage discrepancy remains even when you control for career. In every type of occupation, from medicine to retail, women are earning less than men.

Also problematic is the fact that girls are still being socialized by society to pick female-dominated careers such as teaching, social work, hairstyling, etc. (which are generally lower-paying) and being discouraged from male-dominated careers such as medicine, engineering, and business (which are generally higher-paying). I’m not saying that girls shouldn’t choose a female-dominated career (that would be pretty hypocritical of me, considering that I want to be a social worker). What I am saying is that society is still socializing girls into these roles.

AND if girls do choose a career in a male-dominated field (or even a gender-natural field), it is very likely that their boss and higher-ranking officials in their workplace will be male. It is also likely that they will be passed over for a promotion in favour of a man. In Canada, only 13%  of directors of the top 500 companies are women. That’s telling of the inequality that still exists.

Rape culture. We live in society where rape is still permissible. Women who are raped are often blamed for “asking for it” if they were dressed a certain way, acted in a certain manner, or were under the influence when the rape happened. Sometimes this victim-blaming comes from the very people who are supposed to be punishing rapists. Instead of teaching men* how to not be rapists, our culture instead focuses on teaching women on how to not be raped. It implies that women who don’t follow these rules to the letter “deserved it” if they do happen to be raped. This blog post is a very good overview of rape culture.

(* Yes, I know that women can rape men as well. However, men-against-women rape is FAR more pervasive in our society.)

Slut-shaming. Chances are, you’ve either called a woman a “slut” or (if you’re a woman) have been called one yourself. Maybe you fall under both categories. Have you ever noticed that there no male equivalent of “slut” that carries the same weight as “slut” does when it’s used against a woman?

This word reinforces that sexist attitudes that society has about female sexuality. If you are a heterosexual male, you are free to have sex with as many women as you want without having to worry about society judging you harshly for that choice. If anything, you’ll probably be seen as more masculine because of it.

For women, however, something called the “virgin-whore dichotomy” exists. This means that if a woman decides against being sexually active for whatever reason, she will typically be seen as weird, be called “prude,” etc. because of this choice. However, if she decides to sex outside of marriage or a committed, monogamous relationship, she will typically be called a “slut”. Regardless of her sexual choices, she will be shamed.

Again, this is just a small sample of the many inequalities between men and women today.

I am aware of the many legitimate criticisms against feminism. I’m aware of its history of racism, heterosexism, and cissexism (and sometimes outright transphobia). Some of these problems continue to pervade the feminist movement, although it encourages me to see some feminists working to address these issues.

Although feminism is by no means perfect, but it still remains relevant and needed in today’s society. This is why I call myself a feminist.

Relevant stuff you should check out:

Feminist Frequency (Awesome videos about sexism in popular culture. I want to be Anita when I grow up)

The Male Privilege Checklist (I linked to this in the post, but deserves mentioning again)

Rape Culture 101 (Again, I’ve already linked to it, but it deserves to be here)

• Even though the third week of the semester is almost over, I’m still kind of in “holiday mode”. I haven’t really been doing any readings and I haven’t done anything for my assignments. This is problematic, because I have a three-page essay due on Monday night, the outline for another essay due on Wednesday, and my first midterm on Thursday. Oh, and I have online discussion posts to do. I think I’m going to spontaneously combust.
• My new job is going well. I have now mastered signing out spare keys and lounges to people! Note: this is the simplest thing to remember how to do. The people that I work with are nice enough, and the people that work on evenings and weekends seem especially friendly (which is good, because most of my shifts are evening and weekend shifts). My first midnight to 8 AM shift is on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Wish me luck!
• I’ve found a place to live next year! 3 of my friends and I signed a lease for a house and paid first and last month’s rent for it two weeks ago. The house is really nice – finished basement, HUGE bedrooms, large backyard. The bedroom that I’ve claimed is on the front of the house and has AMAZING natural light. The location is also awesome – it’s on two direct bus routes to the university, one of which is an express route (which means it gets to the university way faster), and it’s a five minute walk away from the main mall in Guelph. It’s also only a two minute walk away from a liquor store . The landlord is also letting us paint our rooms, so I’m currently trying to decide between light green, cerulean blue, and purple. The only downside of the house is that the landlord doesn’t allow pets, so our dreams of having a kitten have been crushed. We’re moving into the house on May 1!
• I’m actually starting to make schedules for myself every day, and I’m actually more productive when I do this. I’m hoping that this means that I won’t have anymore study-all-night-before-the-exam moments, but I have low expectations.
• Apparently you guys are really interested in Ontario’s shitty tuition rates and the cutbacks they’ve made to post-secondary institutions, because my last blog entry is my most popular one to date.

So that is what’s been happening in my life lately. I promise that have a substantial blog entry for you soon!

When I first heard about the rebate over the holidays, I thought it was awesome. After all, I welcome more free money with open arms. Who wouldn’t?

The problem is that it when you read the fine print, it isn’t really more free money. In fact, it’s less.

Here are the problems with this program:

1. The rebate is only available to students who have been out of high school for less than four years. This means that students who take more than 4 years to finish their degree, graduate students, and mature students don’t qualify. In fact, in my final year of university, I probably won’t qualify because my program is four and half years long because I have co-op work terms.

2. Students on OSAP (Ontario’s student financial aid program) that receive the Ontario Access Grant won’t receive the rebate if their OAG is more than $1600, or will have the value of their rebate reduced if their OAG is less than that. This means that I personally won’t receive the rebate because my OAG is about $2600. OAG recipients are among the students with the most financial need because the OAG is for students with families that are unable to support them financially. In other words, the students that receive the OAG are the students that need the rebate the most.

3. To fund this rebate, the McGuinty government cancelled 3 other grant programs. One of those grants was the Queen Elizabeth II Aiming for the Top Scholarship, which is a scholarship given to Ontario high school students who graduate with high averages. The value of the scholarship varies from $100 to $3500 based on the student’s financial need, and is renewable for up to 4 years if the student keeps their college/university GPA above 80%. I am a recipient of this scholarship, and I received the full $3500.

The way that the scholarship works is that money that would have been given to you in the form of a loan is given to you as a scholarship instead. So before I received the scholarship, I had about a $6500 loan. When I was approved for the scholarship, my loan was reduced to about $3000 and the other $3500 was now a scholarship (money that I don’t have to pay back). Without the QEII scholarship, I would have over twice the debt that I actually do have.

From what I understand, current QEII recipients will continue to have their scholarships renewed if they meet the 80% requirement. That’s good for me, but incoming post-secondary students will have to take on more debt to fund their education. And $1600 (if they actually get it)  is nothing compared to $3500.

4. The McGuinty government recently cut over $42 million in grants to universities. When the government cuts funding to universities and colleges, students take a financial hit because their schools raise tuition to cover the shortfall. Here in Ontario, university students pay the highest tuition fees in Canada while receiving the lowest per-student funding. In the other words, Ontario students are paying more for a lower-quality education. $1600 will be a drop in the bucket if tuition just keeps rising.

The 30% rebate, while initially sounding awesome, does little to address the issue of the rising cost of post-secondary education. The provincial government needs to be investing more in colleges and universities, not cutting funding. It needs to freeze tuition. It needs to be expanding financial aid programs instead of cutting them.

It needs to be doing more than pretending to care about post-secondary students, which is all this rebate amounts to.

However, I didn’t recently discover Beach House. I first discovered them about 2 years ago when they played the “Used to Be” music video on The Wedge on MuchMusic (this is one of the only two worthwhile shows on MuchMusic. If you’re up at 2AM on Thursdays, you should watch it). I liked the song, so I downloaded the Teen Dream album and listen to it a couple times…then forgot about Beach House for a while. And by “a while,” I mean about 2 years.

I rediscovered Beach House a few weeks ago after I saw them mentioned online somewhere. I still had Teen Dream on my external hard drive dedicated to music (yes, I have that much ), so I gave it another listen…and fell in love. I wondered why my 17-year-old self hadn’t realized the brilliance of this music. The way that Victoria Legrand’s voice mixes with the swirling keyboards in some songs, but is downright soulful in others. The dark but optimistic tone of the lyrics and music. The…everything. “10 Mile Stereo” and “Real Love” are my favourites on Teen Dream, but the entire album is just…beautiful.

When I read Beach House’s Wikipedia page, I found that Teen Dream wasn’t their debut album like I originally thought it was. Instead, I found out that they had released two albums (Beach House and Devotion) before Teen Dream. This is a visual representation of my reaction when I read that:

When I downloaded their older albums, I quickly found out that they were both just as amazing as Teen Dream. In fact, Beach House (their first album) is actually now my favourite of the 3 albums, probably because it has the most alluringly dark and mysterious tone of the three albums (I like dark and mysterious-sounding music). “Apple Orchard,” “Auburn and Ivory,” and “House on the Hill” are the particularly amazing songs on this album. I haven’t given Devotion as many through listens as I have for the other two albums (probably because I became obsessed with the self-titled album after listening to it once), but it is also a great album. The gems on Devotion include “Turtle Island,” “Holy Dances,” and “All the Years” (which happen to come one after the other on the track listing, making for about 12 minutes for complete musical awesomeness).

Beach House are the masters of making a true album – the songs actually flow together both thematically and melodically instead of just being a collection of songs. I’m not usually one to listen to albums from start to finish (unless I’m listening to an album for the first time), but I ALWAYS listen to all three Beach House albums from start to finish because then I can get the whole effect and mood of their music. I also never skip songs when I’m listening to one of their albums, because nothing on any of the albums is filler; every song is included for a reason.

Part of the reason why I love Beach House is because their music is a very appropriate soundtrack for pretty much everything that I do. For the past week, I’ve had Beach House playing as my background music almost all the time…and it fits, regardless what I’m doing. It’s good for reading, aimlessly surfing the Internet, walking to different places on campus, taking a nap in my room, and lying around thinking. I’ve also discovered that Beach House is awesome music to play after I come back to my room after hanging out with my friends and…doing stuff. Just wanted to mention that Beach House is a particularly good choice in this situation.

Lately, there have been rumours that a 4th Beach House album is coming soon. I’m seriously hoping that this is true and that they go on tour after the album is released. I NEED TO SEE THEM LIVE.

tl;dr: Beach House is amazing and you need to listen to them. I suggest starting with Teen Dream and going from there.

Have you discovered any awesome music lately?

So instead of the job that I applied for, I now have a job working at the residence desks. Basically, my job is to sign out stuff (keys, vacuums, lounges, etc) to students, fill out work orders, hand out parcels, etc. Today was my first of three training shifts (there are three residence desks, and I have to be trained at all three). Right now, I’m kind of overwhelmed by the information and procedures I have to remember, but I have a feeling that it will be pretty straightforward once I get used to doing everything.

I’m pretty happy that I got this job because it’s an on-campus job, so they’re pretty accommodating of everyone’s schedule. This is good because I have classes, yoga, AND meetings for the clubs that I belong to. Two of the three residence desks are open 24 hours, so that means that I’ll probably work some overnight shifts, which doesn’t bother me at all since I usually stay up super late anyways! Plus, one of the residence desks is actually in my building, so when I work at that desk, I don’t even have to go outside to get to work! I don’t want to say exactly how much I’ll be making, but it’s above minimum wage. So far, it seems like the only drawback to this job is the golf shirt that I’m required to wear when I’m working. Like all unisex clothing, it’s too baggy on me and also makes me look even more awkward and dorky than I actually am. But I can deal with that.

Considering the financial hit I just took by paying for tuition/residence (more than $2000) and textbooks/supplies ($542.32 in total), I’m pretty happy to be making some money right now, even if I’m doing it while wearing a dorky-looking golf shirt.

Thankfully, most universities have a thriving used textbook market that make buying textbooks a little less painful for your wallet. I managed to buy one of my textbooks for $40 used when it would have cost me at least $140 new. However, when a prof decides to use a brand new edition of a textbook, you’re pretty much forced to buy it new (you CAN use older editions, but chapter and page numbers might be different or the older edition might have outdated information). This semester, a new edition of my Genetics textbook is being used, so I’m going to have to pay almost $200 for it. Yeah.

Although I hate having to buy new editions of textbooks, I can understand why new editions are sometimes necessary. However, the authors of some textbooks put out new editions EVERY SINGLE YEAR. This is unacceptable to me because they’ve obviously doing it to make more money by forcing students to buy the textbook new. This is what the professor I had for sociology sometimes does (thankfully there was no new edition this year, so I didn’t have to give her money), and that is part of why I disliked her.

When I saw that my Social Psychology class this semester required a brand new (and by “brand new,” I mean “2012 publication date”) edition of the textbook, and that my professor was co-author of the book, I wasn’t impressed. After all, if the old edition was good enough for the Social Psych class last semester, why wasn’t it good enough for us? I suspected another shameless cash grab.

However, when I went to my first Social Psych lecture, the professor announced that she would not be keeping the money she made from sales of her textbook. Instead, she will be dividing the money she makes into thirds and giving three awards to students in our class. One of the awards will go to the student who finds the most typos, inaccuracies, or inconsistencies in the textbook, another will go to the student who suggests the most chapter opening stories or pictures to use in the next edition, and the third will go to the student who gets the highest final grade in the course. All of the awards are open to all students in the class, regardless of whether or not they buy the textbook.

I think that this is a really awesome idea and it proves that she wrote this new edition for the right reasons. Also, I’ve (probably foolishly) convinced myself that I have a shot at the highest final mark award (I don’t want to obsessively pour over my textbook, or troll the internet for interesting stories or pictures, which rules out the other two).

Knowing that some of money will be going back to students definitely makes me feel a little better about paying $140 for a textbook.