<p>Do people bring the textbooks to class or are they normally used to study from on your own time?</p>
<p><em>I went to cosmetology school so I didn’t have the college experience my S is about to. That might be why I have questions about the weirdest things.</em></p>
<p>It depends on the class, but for the most part they’re used outside of class.</p>
<p>Very, very rarely need to bring books or even a laptop to class</p>
<p>I think the only time my kid takes his book(s) or laptop to class is if he is on his way somewhere else to study afterwards and doesn’t want to stop back at his place to get them.</p>
<p>I found the required book for the italian course in their syllabus online. Of course B & N doesn’t have a book even listed for the class. I emailed the Italian dept. and asked about buying used and they said it was fine. I ordered one from Amazon.</p>
<p>The Italian dept. emailed me back, didn’t realize B & N didn’t have their order and thanked me. I looked it up on B & N and the book they had has a specific OSU cover. The one we bought from Amazon is exactly what the syllabus said. (It was written by the OSU department head (?) anyway). Does it really make a difference? I am almost sure it is the same book with different covers.</p>
<p>Sometimes OSU will have a specialized form of the book published just for the university to make it cheaper for students, this specialized form of the book is the exact same book but with a different cover. </p>
<p>I don’t know if that’s the case for your Italian book, but I’m guessing it should be fine, just ask the professor on the first day of class. </p>
<p>In the future, I would recommend to hold off on buying books until after the first day of class, a lot of professors are just required by their departments to list books on the syllabus, but they never actually use the books listed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought a book, gone to class, and had the professor tell the class that he hoped no one actually bought the book listed.</p>
<p>Usually if OSU has a custom edition, it is a scaled down version of the original. That is, it may exclude portions (often a few chapters) that the instructor does not plan to cover but that were included in the original book. The only issue that my kid has ever encountered with this is that he had to make sure he was reading and doing assignments in the chapter of his book that corresponded to the OSU custom edition. I don’t think it was a problem though.</p>