On college and reading the material...

[ShadowArmy]

If you were or are in college, how deeply do you think you had to read the content of the textbook or whatever source to stay on par with the class?

What I mean is, some people need to ready deeply into it, summarize it with pages and pages of notes, seek extra help, etc. and still struggle, and others like me can maintain mostly A's while hardly reading the books at all and taking no notes. But of course most people fall somewhere in between and its different for every class.

I personally don't do well with taking notes because its distracting and I'm a poor multi-tasker, so I usually don't bother. And when it comes to reading the chapters of the textbook, I'm always looking for shortcuts because just reading the material page by page, line by line, is very time consuming and alot of it isn't going to be mentioned in lectures or quizzes/tests. Luckily, some of my classes post study guides that can be easily used to study for tests without resorting to an exorbitant amount of reading, just looking stuff up. But that is mostly for introductory level classes. Obviously I'm moving away from that area now.

 

[The Monkey]

If we have the exam as a test I tend to read most of the material at least once, while if the exam is an essay you can usually get by by only reading parts of it before.

 

[KiplingsCat]

The text in my physics book is very small and there's a lot of big words in it Physics is hard enough as it is without having to get out a dictionary at every hand's turn. I generally have to read through a section two or three times to get my head around it. I wouldn't read the whole thing through though. I just look up sections according to what I need to study.

 

[Jintor]

I'm doing media studies/law, so generally I don't bother taking notes for media studies and note down everything for law.

 

[Qonfused]

**** books, honestly. They cost so goddamn much, and for most classes, I've only opened them three times by the end of the semester. I have six classes right now and I only bought one book. Just take good notes and you're fine.

 

[Ennui]

Depends on the course. Literature classes for example I wouldn't be caught dead not having done the assigned reading AND I take shitloads of notes. Otherwise I don't really take notes, and for big intro courses I usually don't read the textbook unless it is to make up for not having gone to class for several months.

 

[Krynn72]

I never read jack shit unless it actually interested me. I was fine with 3.6 gpa and not doing any work to get it. As long as I paid attention in class, and they actually went over all the material for the exams during lectures, I was fine without reading any of the textbooks.

 

[Insano]

**** books, honestly. They cost so goddamn much, and for most classes, I've only opened them three times by the end of the semester. I have six classes right now and I only bought one book. Just take good notes and you're fine.

Easy there, cowboy. It depends on what books.

I've had some amazing ones, that had both depth and clarity which the average course lacks.

 

[Tyguy]

You can get away with it in some classes whereas others you definately have to read the book. I took astronomy a couple years ago and although I understood everything the teacher was saying, I also had to read the text because he liked to ask random questions from it.

I'd read everything you can though, it can't possibly hurt.

 

[dfc05]

I got through chemical engineering with all A's by just taking notes and not reading textbooks. I kinda have to take notes, otherwise I keep zoning out during lectures, which probably also has something to do with being really tired all the time. I actually dislike having powerpoint slide lectures given to me because I prefer to take notes by hand. The only books I ever looked at in depth were the ones where the professor was so bad that I had to use the book out of necessity. But for government, I read the entire books (or most of each book, at least).

Back in freshman & sophomore year of high school, I actually used to read the entire assigned reading for every single class. Even really boring books like biology and history. It's like I used to be a better student than I am now.

Now I'm in grad school and all I do is read textbooks and papers... all day. And they're not even for a class. Doing homework is like a nice refreshing break from reading .

You can get away with it in some classes whereas others you definately have to read the book. I took astronomy a couple years ago and although I understood everything the teacher was saying, I also had to read the text because he liked to ask random questions from it.

I actually read parts of my astronomy book too, but just because it was interesting (I was just taking astronomy for fun). I kinda miss my astronomy book... so many pretty color pictures.

 

[Letters]

I've a got a couple classes I'm taking right now where I'll do all the reading and a few more where I really just follow along in the book during class since it's kinda painful to just sit down and read. That way the lecture gives me some insight that I can then immediately associate with the text definitions and stuff.

I gotta say I'm far better at this now than I was a few years ago when I did my first two years of college. Better school helps...

 

[Danimal]

I'm an art student.

wtf is text book.

 

[Krynn72]

They're like these books that are just completely filled with really bad, boring artwork called letters and they're supposed to teach you things. They're kinda like hieroglyphs, but not as cool.

 

[Warped]

I used to do so good at one point everyone was copying me, and then i failed big time and so did everyone else. cocaine is a hell of a drug