4 ms·

What happened if you ordered the books only after the first day of class?

trebbble 4y ago
At my school the savvy students wouldn't buy their books until after the first session of a course anyway, since the professors would often, in that first meeting, explain that some books listed in the syllabus as required were actually optional, or that they'd support some set of older editions of a book than the syllabus listed ("it lists the 5th edition, but it's OK if you get the 4th, and if all you can get ahold of is the 3rd, see me after class and we'll get something sorted out—but nothing older than that").
ipaddr 4y ago
In my experience they run out of books
- jrumbut 4y ago
  This thread is bringing back so many bad memories.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  All the students in a course I was teaching apparently were using Chegg for the previous year’s textbook so I decided to use as a supplement (to Strang [which was not the previous year’s book but had all the answers online anyway]) an old Mir publishers book on Diff Eq which I can’t remember exactly how I got (either a bookstore in the French quarter or maybe a library remainder sale). At any rate it turns out the English printing is so rare not only can it not be found on Libgen - the few copies online are selling for hundreds of dollars (which I certainly would not have paid for it). So not only did I luck into a paper fortune (I suspect this is a rather illiquid market - plus I had to go through and fix a bunch of typos by hand, so much for the Soviet STEM educational complex) the kids _definitely_ couldn’t find this on the Internet.
  - cafeinux 4y ago
    Did you put it on libgen?
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      I may soon - there is a book scanner in the med school library and I doubt very much they care about a Soviet copyrighted book (if USSR even asserted such a thing abroad or Russia does now for them).
      - actionfromafar 4y ago
        Russia increasingly does not care about copyright of foreign stuff, so there's that symmetry going too.
moron4hire 4y ago
That's what we did. We waited for the bookstore to open the aisles, found the books, ordered them online, and waited a few weeks to get them. This was before Amazon Prime shipping, you see. The professors were usually sympathetic. Except my political science prof. So I just dropped the course. Fuck him and his unironic bowtie.

At my school the savvy students wouldn't buy their books until after the first session of a course anyway, since the professors would often, in that first meeting, explain that some books listed in the syllabus as required were actually optional, or that they'd support some set of older editions of a book than the syllabus listed ("it lists the 5th edition, but it's OK if you get the 4th, and if all you can get ahold of is the 3rd, see me after class and we'll get something sorted out—but nothing older than that").

ipaddr 4y ago

In my experience they run out of books

jrumbut 4y ago
This thread is bringing back so many bad memories.
selimthegrim 4y ago
All the students in a course I was teaching apparently were using Chegg for the previous year’s textbook so I decided to use as a supplement (to Strang [which was not the previous year’s book but had all the answers online anyway]) an old Mir publishers book on Diff Eq which I can’t remember exactly how I got (either a bookstore in the French quarter or maybe a library remainder sale). At any rate it turns out the English printing is so rare not only can it not be found on Libgen - the few copies online are selling for hundreds of dollars (which I certainly would not have paid for it). So not only did I luck into a paper fortune (I suspect this is a rather illiquid market - plus I had to go through and fix a bunch of typos by hand, so much for the Soviet STEM educational complex) the kids _definitely_ couldn’t find this on the Internet.
- cafeinux 4y ago
  Did you put it on libgen?
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    I may soon - there is a book scanner in the med school library and I doubt very much they care about a Soviet copyrighted book (if USSR even asserted such a thing abroad or Russia does now for them).
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      Russia increasingly does not care about copyright of foreign stuff, so there's that symmetry going too.

moron4hire 4y ago

That's what we did. We waited for the bookstore to open the aisles, found the books, ordered them online, and waited a few weeks to get them. This was before Amazon Prime shipping, you see. The professors were usually sympathetic. Except my political science prof. So I just dropped the course. Fuck him and his unironic bowtie.