Bit different from my day

I wonder how much of a refrain "That's now how we did it the last time I was in school" is going to become. I'll try not to bore you with it.


I picked up my textbooks today. I have no recollection of ever buying textbooks at Ithaca, though I must have. We certainly had books. But I have vivid memories of buying books at Oswego. On the first day of class we got a syllabus from each teacher that listed what the required texts were. We walked across campus to the student union, found the bookstore in the basement, and then wandered up and down the aisles looking for our classes and picking out the books we needed. I still had most of those books up until I packed to move and decided that television production from 1988 wouldn't have much that was still relevant.

This time around all of the hard work was done for me. A few days ago I got an email from school with a list of reminders and dates and stuff. One reminder was to double check that we were registered for classes. So I followed that link. It listed my classes, all in order as I'd expected because I'd been to that page before. But this time there was a new link on that page that said Buy Books. I thought, yeah, ok, and clicked it. It took me to a special Barnes & Noble web page because there is in fact no campus bookstore on the BU campus. There is however a giant Barnes & Noble just at the edge of campus. It's so big because half of it is a regular B&N and half of it is the BU bookstore. On this web page it had sucked in my class list and told me what books my teachers were requiring. It let me check options for new only or used if available. And then click here to buy. Then this morning they sent me an email that said my books were ready. I went to a desk on the 5th floor and they handed me a box with my books.

If all of the things that are different from my day are this much more convenient I'm going to enjoy being a student in the 21st century.