What's up, everybody?
It's Thomas from College Info Geek.
Did you ever wonder how you're going to get all the information in these crazy, huge reading
assignments in a freaking weekend?
I want to share a quote with you that I learned over the week-end while doing research for
this video.
It goes like this, "The mark of a successful college student is the mastery of knowing
not only what to study, but also how to study it."
This applies to your readings as much as it applies to anything else in college.
In last week's video, I went over some strategies that you can use to figure out whether or
not you actually need to do a reading assignment at all.
In this video, I want to start focusing on how you should actually tackle the reading
assignments that you do need to do.
I have three main goals that I want you to keep in mind here.
Number one, you want to learn the right information from your readings.
Obviously, you can't learn every single thing in the book so you want to figure out what
is important and get that into your brain.
Number two, you want to retain that information for as long as you can and be able to use
it later.
Number three, you want to reduce your study time and the amount of time you have your
nose stuck in the book.
To start improving in all of these areas, the first thing that I want you to think about
is the 'why'.
Why are you doing this reading?
A lot of people would say, "You're reading to learn," and, obviously, yes, that's the
point of the education.
I think there's another more immediately practical reason that you're doing a reading.
That is how you're going to be assessed on that reading.
Being a strategic reader means using different strategies for different reading purposes.
Those purposes are defined with the assessments you're going to face in class which lead back
to your immediate goal of earning awesome grades.
Most students tackle their reading assignments like zombies.
They look at the reading assignment and they go, "Must run my eyes over x number of pages
by tomorrow night."
That's it.
Don't be a reading zombie.
Otherwise, your exams are going to turn into a chainsaw.
Know what it is that your brain needs to pull out of the reading and focus on that.
Here are four common reasons that you might do a textbook reading.
Number one, you're going to be facing down a multiple choice test.
Number two, you're going to have to do an essay, actually creating something from scratch
in your own words.
Number three is the evaluation of data in labs which applies to more technical and scientific
majors.
Number four, is the summarization of research for class presentations and reports.
The type of assessment that you have to do will dictate what kind of information you
need to pull out of your readings.
For instance, if you're going to have to do a multiple choice test, then you're going
to want to focus on the details of the reading assignments, taking smart, concise notes about
all the little things in a class and then turning those into questions that you can
study rapid fire later on.
If you're in a class where you have to write essays, then thorough knowledge of the main
ideas is more important.
You're going to want to focus more on summarization and making sure that you can communicate what
you learned in your own words.
There's a tip from the video I did last week on figuring out whether or not you even need
to do a reading assignment that applies perfectly here as well.
That is to gauge your classes.
As a semester goes on, be mindful of what's in the syllabus and what your professor generally
uses to assess you and then apply that knowledge to your readings.
This will take practice, but as time goes on, you're going to find that this mindfulness
really pays off in the time it saves you and the clarity it gives you when you're looking
at your book.
Once you've gauged those classes and figured out the type of information you want to pull
from your reading, how do you actually go about doing that reading?
To start out, let me give you a universal tip that applies to any reading you do.
It's this, "Don't read your textbooks like you read a newspaper."
People who read the newspaper aren't reading to apply what they're learning.
They're just reading to get the gist of the day's events.
You're not reading for gists, you're reading for application.
Also, don't expect that you're going to learn efficiently by just reading and rereading
passages over and over again.
The writer, Virgina Voeks, said that, "How often you read something is immaterial.
How you read it is crucial.
Think of a book like an art museum.
You can walk through the Met in New York ten times, look at all the paintings each time
you go through, and still know next to nothing about any of the art there.
You might know the general layout, where certain pieces are, but if I ask you for details,
"Which artist created this painting?
Where was this dog-thing sculpted," you won't have a clue.
Books are really the same.
Possibly running your eyes over the pages is like casually strolling through an art
museum and not actually studying any of the pieces.
It's actually worse because the brain is better at remembering emotionally evocative pictures
and imagery than it is at remembering squiggly, arbitrary lines on paper.
Instead, try to read in the same way that you'd talk with a friend who challenges you
intellectually.
You listen eagerly, you contribute your own words to the conversation, and, eventually,
both of you create information that comes together to make something new.
This is called active reading.
It's crucial for being able to retain what you learn from your textbooks and be able
to apply it later on.
In my next video, I'm going to over a framework of specific techniques that you can try out
to start using active reading.
To round this video out, I want to leave you with a technique that you can use to create
a small win in your studies.
Here it is.
Create two different habits for your textbook readings.
The first one is going to focus on getting you to read consistently.
The second one is going to focus on getting you to start using active reading instead
of passive reading.
The first habit I think you should try out is reading daily.
This might mean planning ahead in advance what you're going to read for a certain week
and maybe even reading some outside material if you finish everything.
It's all about getting into the habit of reading every single day, making a consistent effort.
For the second habit, try to write down a small amount of notes for each reading you
do or create a small summary for each reading.
It doesn't have to be anything large, you just want to get into the habit of doing it
and being more actively involved in your reading.
With both these habits, you can experiment with making them either input based or output
based.
Input-based habits have a fixed amount of effort that you have to put in to them so
read for fifteen minutes.
That's only fifteen minutes of effort and then you're done.
On the flip side, output-based habits are based on making something concrete.
Write one page of notes could be an output-based habit.
The amount of time and effort you need to put into it isn't fixed.
Personally, I use both of these types of habits in my own reading.
For my actual reading habit, I use an input-based goal, read for fifteen minutes every single
day and then once I've gotten into that, I usually read for longer and I start getting
more engaged.
Then, I use an output-based goal which is to write half a page of notes on what I'm
reading to make sure that I'm actively learning.
Whichever type you choose, it's also important to build a small reward into your habit.
Getting good grades is a good reward, but it's something that's a little too far off
to really count.
I would say, find something else that rewards you for getting the reading done every single
day.
For me, that's ticking off a daily habit [inaudible 06:13] which I've made a little bit more valuable
by creating a challenge in the College Info Geek guild.
If you want to join that, you can go to the companion blog post for this video which you'll
find linked down in the description.
Otherwise, you could do something else like watching an episode of your favorite show
on Netflix, playing a video game, or something else fun.
Make sure that you're building this loop of, "Here's a cue to do my reading, I'm going
to do the reading, and take the notes, then give myself a small reward to reinforce the
positive feeling I get from doing that reading."
That's it for this video.
If you want to get my tips on active reading which will come in the next video, then make
sure you subscribe to this channel and you'll get those right when they come out.
Otherwise, I will see you in that
next video.