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Textbook readings? Where?!

September 12th, 2009 by cL

Readings are very elusive things, but probably only to first-year students like me who only have two or three days’ worth of experience at university.

Of all three of the lectures I’ve been to, none of the professors have told me (or rather, the whole class of several hundred or even a thousand students) to read pages X, Y, and Z. Nope, they didn’t mention readings at all before, during, or after their lecture.

If this were high school, we’d all be cheering, “Yay, no homework!” at this point. Heck, it might even turn into some crappy remake of (the already-mediocre) High School Musical.

That was how I was feeling for the past couple of days. I mean, I knew I had readings… I just didn’t take it very seriously yet. I thought, I can read fairly speedy. I have the weekend to read. I can handle this.

Today, since my ECO prof. cancelled today’s lecture, I visited my high school. And one of my teachers said ominously (when I admitted that I hadn’t purchased all my textbooks yet), “Oh, you better get started soon then, or it’ll be very hard to catch up.”

With that word of warning in mind, I finally cracked open my new PSY textbook this evening, and started reading. And what do you think surprised me most? No, it wasn’t the interestingly easy and understandable way they wrote it, nor was it the fact that my highlighter didn’t soak through the pages. What surprised me most was: “Why is the reading so, so, SO very LONG?!”

Maybe it’s just me and my note-taking, but I’ve only gotten slightly less than half of the way through the required chapter. At least I still have until Tuesday to finish reading it, which is probably manageable.

But after Tuesday’s lecture comes Thursday’s lecture, and that means reading (and comprehending) one chapter in two days. I just hope I won’t be done in by that…on the second week of school.

Disclaimer: No offense intended towards High School Musical, Disney, or Zac Efron fans out there. You like what you like. That’s fine with me.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 12:23 am and is filed under Survival Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “Textbook readings? Where?!”

  1. Felix Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    Lawl. XD
    We should totally do like, an awesome cross-over and chat about random first-year things.

  2. Lori Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    It’s really easy to fall behind on your readings, and once you do it’s a nightmare the longer you go without doing them.

    I’m kind of surprised that your prof didn’t tell you what your readings were though. They usually give you a syllabus with a week-by-week schedule of the course and the corresponding pages to read in the textbook.

  3. Felix Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    My prof does have readings – it’s on his website though.
    I’ve read it a couple of times already, and I’ll be reading more tonight.
    I should highlight stuff too.

  4. SarahM Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

    AHHH tell me about it! on top of that some readings ARE SO COMPLEX it takes me like an hour to comprehend a paragraph! :(

  5. Felix Says:
    September 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm

    Agreeed. D:
    I suppose we’ll have to get used to it..

  6. James Z Says:
    September 13th, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    ZOMGBBQLIKESAMEHERE

  7. justine Says:
    September 13th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    awww first years, you are too cute! Reading this brings a wave of memories from my first year. I struggled the first few weeks getting into the groove of readings. I remember reading and then taking notes on my readings but then that took too long so I just stuck to reading and highlighting at the same time.

    Don’t worry…you guys will get used to it! I’m in third year and still struggle with the length and depth of my readings but you just need to learn what to focus on and what to skim through! :)

  8. cL Says:
    September 14th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    @Felix: We should. If we do happen to blog together sometimes though, we should find a creative way of doing it though…

    @Lori: My profs did have syllabuses, but like Felix, they just put them on their website and wait for you to go seek them out yourself. That’s definitely a leap from being told exactly what to read…with page numbers written on the board, too.

    @Justine: Thanks! I hope so! I’ve been trying taking notes and highlighting…not sure what works best yet, but we’ll see.

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