Hey, what's up everybody?
I'm Thomas from College Info Geek and today we are not going to be talking about probability
theory, but we will be talking reading assignments.
So the question of the day, is "Should you do all of your assigned reading?"
And there are a lot different answers you'll find out there.
Some people will say "No!
It's useless!"
Some people will say "Yes!
Obviously you should do all your reading.
It's the stuff you're supposed to be learning".
And you are stuck in the middle trying to figure out which one of these answers is right.
So hopefully in this video I can give you a little bit of guidance to make that decision
for yourself based on your own set of specific circumstances.
So here's the thing about reading.
Reading assignments help you learn the material that your professor wants you to learn.
Obviously.
However when you're in college, you're time is very limited and you're classwork and reading
are not the only things that you should be doing with that time.
You've also got part-time jobs, building relationships with other people, networking, extracurriculars.
All this kind of stuff and you can't really afford to sink all of your time into reading
and studying and specifically only learning activities.
So here's my initial tip for figuring out how much of your reading to actually do.
Triage your assignments.
Now triage is originally a medical term.
And it's used by doctors and field medics in wars to assess the number of patients they
have in the given time and figure out which one they should focus on first.
However, triage is applicable to many different fields and you can use it when gauging your
reading material because it's really just prioritization with an emphasis on doing the
most important things first and possibly having to let certain things go.
So the thing about reading assignments is that not all of them are required for you
to get a good grade in a certain class.
For one, a lot of the reading material will be covered in class on lecture slides and
you can learn it while you're sitting in class, during the time you've already dedicated to
learning by paying for classes.
And for other classes there are just a lot of the reading materials that will never be
covered on tests, so you don't need to learn it in order to get the grade.
Now unfortunately not every class is like this and a lot of classes do require the reading
material.
So the tip here is to gauge your classes throughout the semester.
Learn which classes require a lot of reading and which classes you can safely skip a lot
of material for.
And when I say skipping, it's not just the binary choice between skipping and reading.
There's actually a spectrum of focus that you can apply to your assigned readings.
And for simplicity's sake, we can break this spectrum down into three specific choices.
Skip, skim, or read.
But I took my marketing class during my junior year, I started the semester off by reading
every single assignment.
However I quickly realized that I could just go to the back of every chapter, note down
the vocabulary, and study that.
And do just fine on the tests.
So that's what I did for the rest of the semester, and I got a great grade in the class.
So if that's what you can do for a specific class, it's going to save you a lot of time.
In other classes just skimming the material alone isn't going to cut it.
So you're going to have to find time to dedicate close reading to that material.
The key here is to remain mindful when you're in class.
Gauge the amount of effort you need to put into the class and the readings as the semester
goes along, and adjust your effort accordingly.
Another thing that you can focus on is the type of readings that are assigned.
So each of your classes will most likely have a primary reading source.
And this is usually going to be the assigned textbook.
Primary reading sources should be a high-priority item for you.
And you should most of your reading assignments in those, However a lot classes have secondary
reading sources.
Maybe articles that the professor that the professor finds interesting or historical
documents.
Things like that.
And a lot of times these readings are not actually that important.
So if you find that you don't have time beyond the primary sources, you can usually safely
skip these.
However you decide to prioritize those readings, the one thing I will say is to always have
that material available in class.
If you're able to dig into your primary sources while you're learning from the lecture slides,
then you're going to be able to solidify concepts in your mind a lot better.
Also the professor might want you to look into the textbook every once in a while.
So just make sure you have it with you.
And the last thing I want to cover in this video is the idea of your time.
So reading assignments are so numerous that they often get the excuse of "I don't have
time to do all of these".
And often that's valid.
But I want you to think about it.
Specifically I want you to make sure that you're not interpreting a lack of efficiency
as a lack of time.
If you're just trying to read straight through all of your reading assignments, then you
might not be tackling them in the most efficient way.
And that may be the true problem when you think that you don't have time to get them
done.
Next week's video is going to be all about strategies and techniques you can use to do
your assigned readings more efficiently.
So if you want to get that, make sure you subscribe to this channel.
But for this video the main idea here is to be mindful of each class's required readings.
As you go through the semester, try to decide which ones require attention more than others.
And then, adjust your investment of time for each one accordingly.
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