I did it ebay!
Oh, I am so sick right now. I've been in bed all day, and I'm sick of it. So I finally managed to claw my way upright, and now all I want to do is go back to bed! This sucks.
Anyway, my sister's been making big bucks on eBay selling old textbooks and stuff, so I thought, "Hey, I've got a ton of old textbooks, and I could sure use the money!" I've never sold anything on eBay before, so Sarah promised to be my guide in such matters. The trouble is, I'm looking around at all my stuff, and I'm not sure there's all that much I can really get rid of. Sure, there's at least one text that I'll never, ever look at again (Educational Psychology, I'm talking about YOU!), but a lot of these books are texts I feel I should keep. I've pretty much reached the point in my academic career that I don't have a lot of stuff laying around that isn't directly related to what I want to do when I grow up. It's not that I really want the MMPI-2: An Interpretive Manual, but at some point, I might actually need it. Like, for real-life reference, not some BS class.
On the other hand, the only textbook I own that I've actually used for reference after the class was over is my Biological Psychology text. That book is so cool, sometimes I just read it for fun. It's certainly not a gripping novel or anything, but it covers so many interesting things - the mechanics of vision, hearing, how our brains work, etc. I can't be bothered to remember every tiny detail of those things, and this book patiently explains and re-explains them over and over again, each time I forget. Alas, I digress.
I've also got some foreign language books, which I'm never keen to part with, and various collections of English literature. I also don't like to sell those because I occassionally like to read them. More often, though, I'll find myself wondering "What's the name of that story about the _____?" Or "What exactly was wrong with that chic in The Yellow Wallpaper?" If life really is in the details, I must be missing a lot of it!
The question of course is: Is the knowlege that I have these books, should I ever need them, worth more to me than the dollar value they represent? I don't know. What's the difference between The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and The Unabridged William Shakespeare? (Neither of those were textbooks, by the way. I just love Shakespeare.) Do I really need them both? Probably not.
Anyway, my sister's been making big bucks on eBay selling old textbooks and stuff, so I thought, "Hey, I've got a ton of old textbooks, and I could sure use the money!" I've never sold anything on eBay before, so Sarah promised to be my guide in such matters. The trouble is, I'm looking around at all my stuff, and I'm not sure there's all that much I can really get rid of. Sure, there's at least one text that I'll never, ever look at again (Educational Psychology, I'm talking about YOU!), but a lot of these books are texts I feel I should keep. I've pretty much reached the point in my academic career that I don't have a lot of stuff laying around that isn't directly related to what I want to do when I grow up. It's not that I really want the MMPI-2: An Interpretive Manual, but at some point, I might actually need it. Like, for real-life reference, not some BS class.
On the other hand, the only textbook I own that I've actually used for reference after the class was over is my Biological Psychology text. That book is so cool, sometimes I just read it for fun. It's certainly not a gripping novel or anything, but it covers so many interesting things - the mechanics of vision, hearing, how our brains work, etc. I can't be bothered to remember every tiny detail of those things, and this book patiently explains and re-explains them over and over again, each time I forget. Alas, I digress.
I've also got some foreign language books, which I'm never keen to part with, and various collections of English literature. I also don't like to sell those because I occassionally like to read them. More often, though, I'll find myself wondering "What's the name of that story about the _____?" Or "What exactly was wrong with that chic in The Yellow Wallpaper?" If life really is in the details, I must be missing a lot of it!
The question of course is: Is the knowlege that I have these books, should I ever need them, worth more to me than the dollar value they represent? I don't know. What's the difference between The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and The Unabridged William Shakespeare? (Neither of those were textbooks, by the way. I just love Shakespeare.) Do I really need them both? Probably not.
posted by thejessicat at 11:26 AM
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