Your collection of textbooks from courses in your major and minor represents the beginnings of your professional library. A hallmark of high-performing professionals is that they are well read in the core information of their field and well informed on issues of the day. Top-level professionals build on their libraries and keep at hand not only a collection of "core works" in the field but also a set of reference materials and other works. If you fall into the "I'll never need this book again" trap, your thinking is leading you down a dead end path: only people who aren't professionally active find that they don't need and regularly use their "essential library."

Besides, your texts are well known to you. They're not strangers you meet in a bookstore or library. And more, the cash value of your books will have dropped. So even if you convince yourself that you need the money, the cost of not building a professional library will far exceed the money you get for them.

And finally, one long-term goal of a university is to help you orient yourself in the canon of knowledge. Your learning doesn't end when you graduate. Your accomplishments at the university are supposed to represent the essence - the basic knowledge and the basic study and learning skills - to build on for the rest of your life. So it only stands to reason that the key books you acquire along the way - the Shakespeare, the Plato, the De Tocqueville, and more - will become the core works of your personal library, too.

When a student is overheard to say, "I hope I don't have to buy that text," or "I'm headed to the book buyback," it's a sure sign of someone who simply doesn't get it.