The economical woes of a college student

Now as you are no doubt aware, I am a college student.
And not just any college student, I am a student at one of the most expensive colleges in the free world.
And even with the help that I'm receiving from the school, there's plenty of debt left to go around, from the remaining tuition costs to room and board, to books (how a few measly little textbook can cost up to several hundreds of dollars is beyond me). So I'm taking it upon myself to try and cut some of these costs (not that I haven't done so before, I just never kept track, and wasted a bunch of money in other ways).
I've already had some minor success with curbing my future debt. This past year I worked a student job (or 2). Mainly I tutored math at my school's Math Learning Resource Center (MLRC) ...I few days ago I told my mom about what I did for my job during the school year (not sure how it came up), and she laughed at me (I felt somewhat insulted)
The working helped put a little extra money in my pocket (which since I had no method of keeping track of my expenses, shortly disappeared on stupid and ephemeral things)

So I've decided that my first order of business in this whole thing is to devise a budget (and stick to it). And then, I need to find ways to reduce my costs, the first being books. Which I'd like to think I'm already doing a fairly adequate job of doing. I almost exclusively by my books online, from sites like ebay, half.com, amazon, and others. I begin the search at Direct Textbook.com
Another good way of lowering costs for books, is borrowing/buying books from friends, which while less likely/expedient is definitely a lot cheaper. The biggest problem with that is finding people who have the exact book you need (and haven't sold it already) also, you may not want to borrow when it comes to your main classes, as you may want to have a copy for a reference.

My next problem is room and board. Room's a bit tricky for me to save on, short of moving in with my older brother (who lives not far) though I'd prefer to avoid that, as he's married with a kid, and my other brother, not to mention I get the feeling it wouldn't be much better than living at home (...). So my only other options would be becoming an RA or getting an apartment. The RA route is nice, as you get free room and board, but there's the added time drain, not to mention having to continue to live in a dorm watching over freshman/sophomores. There's always renting an apartment, though that's usually only cheaper if you have people to room with (which I don't) and it's also a hassle in and of itself trying to find one. Overall this isn't something I have the luxury of worrying over now, as I'm slated to live in the dorms this year, and it's far too late to become an RA.

Lastly but certainly not least. There is food expenses. I'm sure i don't need to tell you, but college meal plans are expensive (or more accurately a rip-off) costing on average (at my school) over 2k a semester (!!!) not to mention limited to what the school has to offer. Now earlier today I came across a very interesting story (brought to my attention by HackerNews) And it is an amazing article, the author (Andrew Hyde) basically recounts how during college he was able to live reasonably well on $36 per month on food (I know I was also astonished)
Here are a few tips he mentioned in his article:
Everything you buy, should be at least half off retail. ; cook at home ; load up on foods that are deep discounted. figure out the coupon/sales/clearance cycles of your nearby stores. pass on things that aren't sale, and keep things in your house from spoiling (freeze perishable foods, store things properly, etc) ; He mentioned several other very good tips, but I'll just direct you to the article again, rather than list more.

I know a friend of mine, Aaron who goes to my school (and has a blog himself) could really do to read this article, as he's very financially conscious himself.
Unfortunately as I'm living in a dorm this year, I've no choice but to get a meal plan, but next year! I shall put my plan into action, and save some money. In the mean time, I hope this has been at least a little helpful to you oh nameless reader. Good luck, and take care (now is where you turn the other way so I can slip away into silent anonymity) which is one of the best websites I've ever seen for finding cheap books, it's essentially a search engine (and a store) it finds prices from many different sites (including the ones I already named) it also adds in the cost of shipping making it all very nice and convenient.