If you happened to take a look at the counter located on the right of the screen, you know that fall classes begin next week. There is still so much left for me to do before I go back.
What I have planned for today is a trip out to school. I need to leave a copy of my Individualized Section Form with the Chair of the English Department so that she can sign it (here it occurs to me that the title of that form doesn't really say a whole lot about what it is for and I need to make a mental note to return to that later on, most likely in a separate entry). There is one other thing I can probably take care of while I'm there on campus so it doesn't feel so much like a wasted trip. I *could* stop by the school bookstore and see if a course packet I still need is available now. I already have all of the actual books for the classes I will be taking. Having said that, I arrive at what I wanted to take the time now to write about.
For ENGL 335, Shakespeare's Histories and Comedies, the professor had ordered copies of the Riverside Shakespeare, but I had already purchased The Norton Shakespeare at the begining of the summer A term for the Romances and Tragedies class that I ultimately dropped due to exhaustion. This was through someone who was selling a copy on Amazon for a mere $30. It seemed superfluous to me to have two complete works of Shakespeare in my possession, so I asked the professor if I could get away with using that and she said it would suffice. The Riverside Shakespeare would have cost me $60 used or $80 new. The course pack I hope to pick up today will also be for this class. It's pretty cheap at only $3.
For FRLN 573, Basic Issues in Language Pedagogy, I needed to purchase two books. This was a special topics class I had signed up for that was only being offered during the summer in session C and the credits were supposed to go towards fulfilling my linguistics concentration. Since I had to drop Shakespeare's Romances and Tragedies earlier in the summer, and my aid was contingent on my taking two summer classes, there was no feasible way I could remain enrolled in this other class. So I worked it out with the professor and the Director of the Linguistics Program to take the class as an independent study during the fall and still use the credits towards my linguistics concentration. That is where that Individualized Section Form comes in. I need to have that completed before I can register for LING 499, which is the course number for independent studies in linguistics. Anyway, I had purchased the books while they were still available to the class in the bookstore and they both came to $97.60.
Before I was able to and had gotten around to ordering my remaining books, I had already technically spent $127. This figure includes The Norton Shakespeare as well as the two linguistics books.
Something that I want to take a moment to mention here is how school bookstores have done things up until this semester and how that has been altered by a law that was recently passed. A few weeks before a semester starts school bookstores receive orders from the professors and the only way a student could figure out what they would need to purchase for their classes was to either call the bookstore or just go in. That information, along with price, is now made available to students via the web. This is so that students can order their books online at competitive prices and receive them in time for classes.
I ordered my remaining books from Barnes and Noble because they had the best deal I could come across with the 10% member discount and free shipping. The total for the four books came out to $92.14. I placed my order on Friday of last week and they promptly arrived here on the following Monday in plenty of time for the start of classes.
After I go and get my course pack I will have spent on books a grand total of $222.14. Just based on the price of *used* texts that the school bookstore quoted me on those last four books I saved about $60 by ordering them online. So, the lesson here is order your books online and get brand new copies at a cheaper price.
-- CrystalShiloh @ 12:48 PM