<p>Honestly, wait until the first day of classes. More than likely, nothing will be due within the first week or so.</p>
<p>The only problem with that theory is that if you are buying your textbooks online, shipping is often by Media Mail, which is the slowest option available.</p>
<p>If you can get any of your books for cheap- especially reading books and not textbooks, you might as well just go ahead and buy them now.</p>
<p>My books always come in quickly or at least on time, so I’ve never experienced this theoretical problem.</p>
<p>Not everyone will. Often it’s only a day or two slower than First Class Mail. However, if you are shipping something from the northwest to Florida, it can take 2-3 weeks to receive. In fact, when I bought one of my Fall textbooks a few weeks ago it took 3 weeks to get the book.</p>
<p>One of my summer textbooks shipped from Atlanta and took 11 days for me to receive, because of how the USPS has spaced out their facilities for Media Mail (as stupid as it is, Atlanta doesn’t have a facility for Media Mail items. The closest to there is in Memphis, and the only one in north Florida is in Jacksonville). </p>
<p>If you need a book quickly though, you might as well pony up the extra $4 or so to get it upgraded to Priority Mail instead. It’s almost always worth it.</p>
<p>When should our classes start to shop up on blackboard?</p>
<p>They are there now in the secure apps area.</p>
<p>If you mean when the Blackboard course will be activated by the professor, it will most likely happen the week before courses start, although I have learned that not all professors actually use the Blackboard site, so you might get one that never activates the course site. </p>
<p>If you mean when they should show up on your registration, they should be there from when you registered for them.</p>