After graduating, what did you do with your academic documents?

[oiprocs]

Old quizzes, homeworks, lecture notes, exams, finals, etc. Did you keep these? For what purpose? To reference one day?

If you're an engineering major, you might keep that stuff in case you encounter something similar at work, and you dig through your documents to find a way to solve something specific.

But other than that reason, why else would you keep the documents? For the memories?

Personally, when I finish in June, I might just come back in the fall quarter and hand them all to some lucky 1st year.

 

[DaWhim]

i keep some of the books. everything else went to recycle.

 

[Arcadio]

I kept some of my notes and exams just for the memories. I know I will never use them.

 

[IronWing]

I kept a few text books and one course notebook that have proven useful. Everything else is gone. The one useful notebook was from an engineering professional development course I was allowed to audit over spring break. Turns out those folks knew what was useful to professional development.

 

[Spike]

I kept them all until the 5 year mark (last year) and then I burned it all. Textbooks, papers, notebooks, even a calculator... it all went into the fire pit. It was actually alot of fun, though freaking textbooks take forever to burn since their so dense.

 

[nerp]

Box. Stored. Old notebooks are hilarious to look through as you get older. Don't chuck it. Textbooks can be donated.

 

[krunchykrome]

I kept some of my old accounting books. I threw all of my work away, and sold back my all of my other books.

In grad school, same thing.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Mostly recycling. I wanted to burn my math book though but never got around to it. I kept all my books for a few years then realized I'd never look at them again and they were probably all outdated vs what I can find online anyway. Tried to find a place that would take them (book shop, college, schools etc) but nobody would, so they ended up going in the recycling too.

Throwing away all that school stuff was an awesome feeling. A feeling of success, and an ending of all perils.

 

[gorcorps]

sold them to incoming freshmen at a substantial premium

 

[Triumph]

Way too much work for me to just dump down the drain. It's sitting in milk crates in my dad's shed. I have (almost) all of my textbooks with me here at work (engineer).

 

[nageov3t]

I kept anything I could foresee using for grad school someday (text books I could see referencing, old papers/essay tests I could see using for thesis ideas, etc) and boxed it all along with similar stuff from high school.

my high school stuff came in handy in college (there were a few times when I was so bankrupt for thesis ideas that I'd take the idea from a paper I wrote in hs and re-write it), so I could see my college stuff coming in handy in grad school if I went to grad school for something to do with what I studied in.

 

[Possessed Freak]

I had an old fashioned book burning after graduation. I was offered a total of $35 for my last year books, decided burning them would be more pleasurable.

I also burned most of my notebooks and whatnot. I did save my physics books and a few programming books as reference material.

 

[tmc]

books: you should keep/donate (even to a library). don't burn.

notes/hw/exam papers: if you had individual sheets (which is what I have) in a file (as opposed to a bound notebook), feed it to an automatic scanner & then backup and then recycle the papers.

 

[Brainonska511]

Going to be heading to grad school, so this is my idea of what I'm going to do:

Books: keeping stuff related to my major. sell off the rest
Notes: keep major related stuff, toss the rest
HW: Already tossed it at the end of each year. Some of it is still on my computer, where it sits taking up a few MB.
Exams: holding onto them.

 

[BoomerD]

I kept them all until the 5 year mark (last year) and then I burned it all. Textbooks, papers, notebooks, even a calculator... it all went into the fire pit. It was actually alot of fun, though freaking textbooks take forever to burn since their so dense.

Oh my... Are you sure it's the books that are dense?




I've kept all my accounting texts, a couple of English books that deal with writing styles and such, picked up a few out-of-date textbooks at the campus bookstore's "yard sale" for future reference. (nothing like a good macroeconomics text on those sleepless nights...ZZZZZZZ"

As for notes and tests, most of those have been tossed into the recycle bin.

I've kept a few handouts, a couple of sets of notes, and some of my assignments...but not much.

 

[TecHNooB]

I kept them all until the 5 year mark (last year) and then I burned it all. Textbooks, papers, notebooks, even a calculator... it all went into the fire pit. It was actually alot of fun, though freaking textbooks take forever to burn since their so dense.

Your money :/

 

[snowraven]

Sold books on ebay, the notes to my younger classmates

The transcripts and stuff.. buried in the garage somewhere..

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I keep all of my text books. I toss all of my own notes immediately after the exam. I usually throw out my course readers but have kept a couple of them because they have some nifty algorithms and heuristics that are very difficult to find in the real world (like the current best Traveling Salesman heuristic which you won't see outside of academic journals).

 

[Jeff7]

B.S. in mechanical engineering technology here, just graduated in May '09.

A few textbooks got sold, some are here on a bookshelf, and the rest are at work.

Notes: I've kept everything that was related to the major. I know for sure that everything hasn't been fully committed to memory, and the notes are the easy guides for figuring the stuff out again.
This job I'm at has me doing all kinds of things, across the entire spectrum of engineering, including some stuff that's beyond what I hit on at college. Just within the realm of mechanical engineering, I've done pressure analysis, stress analysis of beams, analysis of structures, heatsink sizing, design of machinery, and some work on corrosion prevention. But there are other things that I haven't hit yet, like designing for vibration, or performing a vibration analysis of an existing system. I have no idea when I may need that knowledge, but when I finally do, I can guarantee you that I'm going to want my notes handy if I do anything that involves a formula.
Our vibrations textbook was apparently written by someone with an epic hardon for very advanced calculus, of which I'm not a fan. The instructor kindly toned down a lot of it, taking us through only the derivations which he had found important during his time spent in industry. Most of the rest was either trig/algebra, with some light calculus work here and there.


Gen-ed items, most of those notes were rudely introduced to the recycling circuit; the books got sold.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I kept them all until the 5 year mark (last year) and then I burned it all. Textbooks, papers, notebooks, even a calculator... it all went into the fire pit. It was actually alot of fun, though freaking textbooks take forever to burn since their so dense.

Why would you burn a text book? They're worth a lot of money.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Our vibrations textbook was apparently written by someone with an epic hardon for very advanced calculus, of which I'm not a fan.

Surely that must be The Physics of Vibrations and Waves by H.J.Pain (most appropriate name ever)? Worst fucking textbook ever.

 

[meltdown75]

everything is in a tote in the basement. books, notes, everything.

 

[fffblackmage]

notes and homework stuff gets tossed after a year or two. some textbooks i resell on half.com and some that are no longer worth anything I keep (damn you publishers and your nth editions!).

 

[SphinxnihpS]

I mailed every paper, poem, or story I ever wrote to myself, registered mail.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Why would you burn a text book? They're worth a lot of money.

Not after the year they were used. They usually have a newer edition, so even the same college and same program wont be able to make good use of them as they're outdated. I had trouble GIVING mine away, let alone selling them.

About the only book that never goes out of date is the Bible.