He's 15, so he can't drive, 55!

He could pick them up today or tomorrow and I figured we'd go today because there's a mandatory meeting at the college tomorrow and I'm thinking a lot of the students will go before the meeting.

On the way, I'm telling my son about when I worked in the college bookstore, hard cover/soft cover, new/used, selling the books back at the end of the semester, etc. We walk in and there are five people working in this fairly small store. The shelves are stocked with T-shirts, Tervis tumblers, mugs, sweat shirts are on hangers, etc., but one thing is noticeably absent which I will get to in a second.

We are the only customers in the store, he walks up the the register, says his name and that he's here to pick up his books. The young lady rifles through some receipt tapes, says here you are, and hands him a receipt tape. She explains that there's codes on the tape that he has to enter online to get access to his books. That explains the things that were noticeably absent.

WTF? There were no books in the college bookstore! Five people "working" there. We had books at the bookstore I worked at, two people at a time working to help students find them and a cashier. I thought he might need a hand carrying his books. Maybe he could memorize the codes and I'll burn the receipt or something. What a waste of time and diesel. They could have just emailed it to him, or handed it to him the first day of class. I'm so glad we beat the rush.

On a side note, his first swim meet of the season is tonight. I hope they haven't done away with the swimmers.

Wait - where does beer money come from at end of semester when you turn them back in for 25% of the amount your parents paid for them??!!

Digital books?
How are you supposed to take any notes?

I don't really recall using the book all too much through the later years in college, except my income tax class. Prof told us on day 1: take notes in the book & bring it for all the tests.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Digital books?
How are you supposed to take any notes?

I don't really recall using the book all too much through the later years in college, except my income tax class. Prof told us on day 1: take notes in the book & bring it for all the tests.

Open book tests??

That's crazy. Why force people to take in stuff just off the screen.

Different people take in information differently. That's a real rip-off. You probably paid standard price and their cost is tenths of pennies rather than the cost of actually printing the book.

A 15 year old college student. Impressive!
Congrats.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Digital books?
How are you supposed to take any notes?

I don't really recall using the book all too much through the later years in college, except my income tax class. Prof told us on day 1: take notes in the book & bring it for all the tests.

Open book tests??

For income tax, yes.
If you didn't know the material, having the book wouldn't help you.

If there was ever anything worse than selling a gun back to a gun store, it was a college textbook pre digital age

Bought new for $150

Barely used it

Sold it back to them for $25

They turn around and sell it for $100

For a while students formed Varsity Books which would have paid you ninety dollars out of your one hundred. Universities stopped that after a while. Bookstore was going out of business.

My constitutional Law class didn't require any books to purchase. We had to review the US Supreme Court cases and write briefs on what we read. Only one copy at the library so a mad scramble to get there first.
Of course, this was 40 years ago.

PC

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
That's crazy. Why force people to take in stuff just off the screen.

Different people take in information differently. That's a real rip-off. You probably paid standard price and their cost is tenths of pennies rather than the cost of actually printing the book.

The good news is the taxpayers of Florida, including myself, are paying for this. His high school is a charter school at the college. He’ll be getting his high school diploma and AA degree when he’s done. The tuition and books are covered by the county, so we pay nothing out of pocket just like we would if he went to the local public high school. He’s a full blown college student, in person classes at the college taught by professors with regular college aged classmates.

I can’t imagine not having a printed textbook, but I think we can make it work with the screens he has. Textbook on one screen, homework on another. He’s got a 55” 4K TV above his desk, 27” 1440p monitor on his desk, and 14” 1080p laptop.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

The good news is the taxpayers of Florida, including myself, are paying for this. His high school is a charter school at the college. He’ll be getting his high school diploma and AA degree when he’s done. The tuition and books are covered by the county, so we pay nothing out of pocket just like we would if he went to the local public high school. He’s a full blown college student, in person classes at the college taught by professors with regular college aged classmates.

I can’t imagine not having a printed textbook, but I think we can make it work with the screens he has. Textbook on one screen, homework on another. He’s got a 55” 4K TV above his desk, 27” 1440p monitor on his desk, and 14” 1080p laptop.

If he can use all three monitors at the same time, that would be good despite the screens at different locations and different sizes.

I personally prefer three monitors the same size and next to each other. You can have the report he's doing on one screen, the textbook on the second screen and google, chat, and whatever else on the third screen.

There are some advantages to 'soft' textbooks. But longevity might not be one of them. Some of them are 'rented' and might go away after awhile.

I still have the good texts from undergrad and grad school. Good news is I still have them. Bad news is they take up space in the bookcases.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:

If he can use all three monitors at the same time, that would be good despite the screens at different locations and different sizes.

I personally prefer three monitors the same size and next to each other. You can have the report he's doing on one screen, the textbook on the second screen and google, chat, and whatever else on the third screen.

I was thinking the 4K TV is really like 4-1920x1080 screens by itself. Alternatively, the 4K TV should have the vertical resolution to show two full pages of a textbook side by side. Here is his current setup minus the 27” monitor that I have yet to purchase:

They should've had a list of books required for the classes on his schedule, and they should've had ISBN numbers for each of those books. Then you could search Amazon, Chegg, etc. and just buy or rent them from third party retailers.

We just visited the PSU main campus a few weeks ago to take the tour for my daughter. The bookstore is actually ran by Barnes and Noble and it's an extension of the PSU merch store. From what I recall they did have physical books there too. A few years back when we were vacationing in Williamsburg we walked the W&M campus and their bookstore is the same way, ran by Barnes and Noble and they had physical books.

This was my setup at work when I ran the distribution center.
Two 27” monitors for getting work done. Email always on the left, as it was used about as much as the right. Most of the real work (not email) was done on the right screen. All the other MS Office programs, WMS system, etc. far right was a 24” monitor turned vertical. It was for instant messaging, and music.
65” monitor up top was used as a display for nightly progress of each department. WMS dashboard of how the day was going.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

I was thinking the 4K TV is really like 4-1920x1080 screens by itself. Alternatively, the 4K TV should have the vertical resolution to show two full pages of a textbook side by side. Here is his current setup minus the 27” monitor that I have yet to purchase:

If you can make the 27" show 2 pages, that will work. No need to spend more; you got to work with what you have.

Beancooker's set-up is the best even without the 65" monitor. I've had instances where I could flip one of the monitors vertically like he has like trying to follow a procedure but I was too lazy to go through the trouble of physically flipping the monitor.

Here's my show and tell of my current set up. 15.6" laptop monitor flanked by 15.6" monitors on either side. A Samsung tablet above the right monitor and I can watch the 55" tv over the top.

quote:

Originally posted by PCWyoming:
My constitutional Law class didn't require any books to purchase. We had to review the US Supreme Court cases and write briefs on what we read. Only one copy at the library so a mad scramble to get there first.
Of course, this was 40 years ago.

PC

Same for me back in the late 80s. Except on several occasions, we’d get there only to find that *someone* had taken a razor and cut out the cases we needed. (We strongly suspected one hyper-competitive classmate, but no one ever caught him). Luckily, I had access to another law library and would make copies for myself and my classmates.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

I still have the good texts from undergrad and grad school. Good news is I still have them. Bad news is they take up space in the bookcases.

Yep. Might just need that copy of Incropera and DeWitt heat transfer textbook one day.

Save money and go used. Daughters bought used online and sold back to bookstore for more than they paid.