How to Keep Up With Readings in Graduate School
There is truly only one answer to the question and it’s SKIM!
Do not have any expectation on yourself that you will actually be able to slowly and carefully read every single word of a reading and take time to deeply reflect on everything you have read. Some weeks you are going to have a little less reading, some weeks a mountain, and some weeks a regular amount but you’ll be swamped with assignments or stuff going on in your personal life.
Skimming is the only way to survive, stay sane, and stay on top of everything. As I mentioned before, you want to do your readings before class. Even though you’re skimming, you still want to be able to make reasonably intelligent conversation about what you’ve read.
My method for reading is this:
At the beginning of the semester I create a “master list” of all required readings and due dates in Notion, copying and pasting from my syllabi for all classes. Each week I know how many readings I’ll have for each class and I check them off as I go. (I also keep track of this in my Hobonichi planner.) This master reading list is the document I check most often. It takes a while and is a bit tedious to set up properly but an hour or so of work at the beginning of the semester is well worth the convenience for the entire rest of the term.
Do a quick peek through the material. Flip through and notice how many pages, how dense the material seems, let your eyes pass over the headings and subheadings. I usually go course-by-course since I’ll have about 2-3 readings per class per week on a normal week. I don’t worry about the next course until I’ve finished the one I’m working on. I have a general idea of how many pages I can reasonably get through in a day based on what else I have going on that day. I try to be realistic with my reading goals and compassionate with myself when I feel too tired, distracted, or when life “gets in the way.” (Note: life actually comes first, don’t kid yourself.)
Read/skim the material. I prefer to do most of my reading on my iPad in GoodNotes 5. I love being able to pinch and zoom, highlight, erase, write in the margins, use different coloured pens, cover the page in notes etc and not worry about messing up. Textbooks and readings with a lot of images or graphs are easier to read on the iPad, while non-fiction may be easier to read on a Kindle (plus Kindle is better for your eyes). In the case that I’m reading on Kindle, I will highlight and take notes on my Kindle, then export them into Notion using Readwise.
Just let your eyes pass over the material. See what jumps out at you. If a sentence piques your interest, read it. When you get bored or the author is repeating themselves, skip ahead.
Reading just the first or last sentence in a paragraph can be a good technique.
Especially with any reading listed as “optional:” just tell yourself you’re reading this for interest only and there is no pressure. I skim these even faster than the required readings but do like to check them out whenever possible to see if there’s anything that does draw me in. Sometimes professors will list a reading as optional but then still want to discuss it in class, so it’s best to at least read the first and last paragraphs.
Take notes for class. Some of my classmates don’t do this, they just do the readings and their highlights/margin notes are enough for them. If that works for you, cool, but I like to see my notes typed to reference them easily during discussion. I will take my handwritten margin notes and highlights and turn them into typed notes written in my own words in Notion, so that everything is in one place (Notion is my “second brain” and basically everything I think, read or write goes in there for future reference. Having all of my notes in my own words in one place makes referring back to past readings much easier when writing final papers. Another scenario where work up front saves time later on).
When I’m in class I’m able to reference these notes easily by using my iPad as a second screen. So my main laptop has Zoom open and my iPad nearby has my notes that I refer to during discussion. (I honestly don’t know how people could survive grad school without an iPad, I don’t even know how I survived my first two college degrees without one!)
If you really do not have time to read or find yourself losing focus, try using a pdf reader like the Chrome extension “Screen Reader” or the “Natural Reader” website which will read your pdfs aloud to you in a robot voice. You could also look for interviews with the author on YouTube to get a vague idea of their topic of interest and listen to them talk about their subject.
One really important thing to remember is that if you are having trouble understanding some dense academic text, it does not mean you are stupid or that you don’t belong in graduate school! It probably means the author sucks at writing. In my opinion, if you can’t write clearly enough that any intelligent layperson could understand what you’re saying, then your writing isn’t very good. So if you are reading some academic text full of jargon and ten-dollar words and are finding yourself completely lost and frustrated, it’s probably not you. Just remember you’re only skimming, push yourself through the reading as best you can, take whatever is useful and leave behind the rest.
Graduate school is a marathon so remember that getting every single reading done perfectly with great notes and discussion points every week is not the end goal. Surviving the entire program is the end goal and sometimes that means going easier on yourself, putting your real life before your workload, resting so you can get back at it tomorrow, or just saying “fuck it” and starting fresh the next week.
Here are some links that my graduate school supervisor passed along to me which you may find useful:
Grad School Survival Guide
Wiki How Guide for Grad School Reading, Study, and Time Mgmt