Ahhhh. Seminary.
Over the last few days, I have become officially entrenched in seminary. ¬†I received my email account and my login information into one of the most basic online student information tool I have ever seen. ¬†The tool I used at Cornell in 2000 was incredibly detailed which makes the tool at LTSP look really really sad. However, they promise to unleash new features soon so I’m looking forward to that. At least I’m now able to see that I really am enrolled at LTSP and that, in a lot of ways, is all I really need. ¬†It made me comfortable enough to add LTSP to my facebook page. ¬†I can’t get more official than that.
Today, the book list for my classes arrived and – well – it didn’t shock me too much. I expected to spend close to $500 a semester in books and, if I did the math right, I won’t reach that amount this semester. I am, of course, completely ignoring the ‘suggested’ book list for one of my classes. ¬†If I bought those books, my total book cost would double. ¬†Two of those books I will most likely buy (for fun) but I’m very curious to see if my professor is the type of professor where ‘suggested books’ are really ‘required books’. ¬†If yes, I might end up spending most of my time in seminary at the library reading those suggested books. ¬†I don’t think I have the physical space in my bags to carry those books between home and seminary every week.
The email containing the book list also included a small plea from the administrators that I purchase all my books from the seminary bookstore. I understand the sentiment. ¬†I fully want to support the book store. I have, already, purchased some items from there even before I was enrolled. ¬†The book store does have a 20% discount on most titles I am required to pick up which, in some cases, is less than amazon.com’s prices. ¬†And that’s great. ¬†And for those few books, I will be picking them up from the store. ¬†But if I’m going to save $20 bucks buying a new copy from an amazon.com partner, I have to take that deal. ¬†I hope the bookstore can forgive me.
And being the engineer that I am, I quickly threw together a spreadsheet of the books I need, their price points on various websites, and whether buying the books on a Kindle was a possibitly. ¬†I don’t have a Kindle yet but I want one – ooooooh, do I want one. ¬†Only a half a dozen titles, or so, are available for the Kindle and the savings between buying a new/used copy and the kindle copy does not make up enough to justify buying a Kindle right away. ¬†Over the long term, I’ll probably save money. And I’ll probably save money on any future back problems that I’ll develop while lugging those books back and forth. ¬†But, sadly, too few of my books are un-kindle-ized at the moment. I hope that changes.
After placing a small book order, I then went out to TJ Maxx and bought some more Chucks.  Getting those shoes 40% off is a deal I will take advantage of all day, every day.  Thus, my total seminary cost is, at the moment, slightly north of two hundred.  So far, so good.
Keep us updated on the Kindle-ization of theological books. The moment e-readers were invented, I thought they would be a brilliant solution to one particular problem, viz., Hebrew class. Unless you are exceptionally good at languages, just sitting in an exegesis class means keeping your Hebrew Bible, lexicon, and textbook open in front of you, probably along with a notebook, flash cards, and English Bible. It’s a nuisance in the classroom, and a spine-crusher in the backpack.
A Kindle could reduce the baggage considerably, but only if the standard Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon and Hebrew Bible were available. Which strikes me as one of those things that ill happen soon, if it hasn’t yet.