How would I be best to deal with large quantities of readings?

[psychstudent90]

Hi everyone,

I'm a new postgraduate health psychology student studying for my Masters. I have two core theory based units at the moment (semester one) that both have large amounts of readings each week. They each have approximately 2-8 "essential" readings and then another 6-10 "background" readings per week. I also have two research methods and statistics units, and a dissertation to work on.

At this point in time, I'm trying to read all of my readings for each unit each week (essential and background readings), and to make notes from my essential readings, but not my background readings. I'm finding this pretty hard to keep up with, and am considering stopping taking notes on the essential readings, and just reading the essential and background readings, but am not sure how I will go without any notes when it comes to exam preparation.

I will have my notes from my lectures which are quite extensive and will definitely use them for exam preparation, but worry that I will need more than that to do well (aiming for distinction). What do you think? What would you do?

Thanks so much!

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[smalltownpsych]

I always took notes during lecture and rarely, if ever, took any notes from readings. The only time I received less than stellar grades on an exam during graduate work was when I was during my Masters and I forgot that there was an exam and did not study for it at all. I scored a 65 or so. Ugh. We only had one other test in the class so I had to ace the final to still be able to pull off a B. I also got a lot of Bs in one of my doctoral classes because the exam questions were incredibly complex from a grammatical standpoint. Most students had the same difficulty and for some it was a nightmare. It sounds to me like your are the classic overachieving grad student like the rest of us so I am sure that you will do okay.
p.s. wanted to make clear that I have always had good retention from reading so if note taking is what you need to do to retain info and that is what you did in undergrad, then you might want to keep doing what you are doing.

 

[xXIDaShizIXx]

First panic. Then sit down and read all of them to the best of your abilities. You may not get through all of them, so you may have to prioritize. You may not understand all of them either. Don't be upset by this and don't think about it. Get into good habits and it will get easier each time you have to read.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I know folks in my grad program got reading groups together and divided articles up amongst themselves. Then everyone just wrote one-page summaries of their articles and shared/discussed with the group. Could be an option, especially for the background readings.

 

[smalltownpsych]

I know folks in my grad program got reading groups together and divided articles up amongst themselves. Then everyone just wrote one-page summaries of their articles and shared/discussed with the group. Could be an option, especially for the background readings.

I remember now. We did that too. Don't tell anyone but I'm pretty sure that there were some assigned readings that I might not have ever read more than the summary page from other students.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I remember now. We did that too. Don't tell anyone but I'm pretty sure that there were some assigned readings that I might not have ever read more than the summary page from other students.

Honestly, given the number of readings we were assigned, I don't know that it'd have been possible to read them all in the time frame provided. Heck, some of the professors even ended up incorporating the one-page summary strategy into our classes.

 

[smalltownpsych]

Honestly, given the number of readings we were assigned, I don't know that it'd have been possible to read them all in the time frame provided. Heck, some of the professors even ended up incorporating the one-page summary strategy into our classes.

 

[mcvcm92]

Just remember, Bs get degrees! (Although who doesn't love a nice A )

 

[perhaps11]

I know folks in my grad program got reading groups together and divided articles up amongst themselves. Then everyone just wrote one-page summaries of their articles and shared/discussed with the group. Could be an option, especially for the background readings.

This lasted one semester for my cohort before one or more people stopped pulling their weight. I'm sure it's worked for other cohorts/classes, though. For me, I just had to become comfortable skimming the readings less likely to be the main focus of discussion and selectively reading for classes I viewed to be lower in priority. Just keep in mind that every faculty member will tell you to skim readings for all grad classes EXCEPT the ones for which they are the instructor.

 

[PositivelySkewed]

Triage. Or I found this strategy useful: Say if you have 5 assigned readings--- read 2 of them in-depth, preferably the most comprehensive of the 5 articles (generally if I had 5 assigned readings on a topic, 2 would be comprehensive and the others would be more nuanced).

Become an expert on the selected articles that you read-- know them better than your instructor and anyone else in the class. Then you can blow essay questions or class discussions out of the water.

Or sometimes contrasting viewpoints would be paired together on a syllabus-- read the 2 contrasting articles and know the contrasting arguments well. A little pattern recognition when looking over a syllabus can go a long way.

 

[smalltownpsych]

Triage. Or I found this strategy useful: Say if you have 5 assigned readings--- read 2 of them in-depth, preferably the most comprehensive of the 5 articles (generally if I had 5 assigned readings on a topic, 2 would be comprehensive and the others would be more nuanced).

Become an expert on the selected articles that you read-- know them better than your instructor and anyone else in the class. Then you can blow essay questions or class discussions out of the water.

Or sometimes contrasting viewpoints would be paired together on a syllabus-- read the 2 contrasting articles and know the contrasting arguments well. A little pattern recognition when looking over a syllabus can go a long way.

I agree with this strategy and use variations of it to this day. I can't read every article that is relevant to my current clinical practice so I have to use strategies to select what is most relevant and applicable. If I tried to read and critically analyse in depth all articles that I come across, I wouldn't have time to see very many patients. In retrospect then, i think some of the overload was intentional to help us use effective strategies to access and integrate a wealth of data.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

There's also something to be said for (gasp) just reading large numbers of abstracts. It isn't going to give you much information, if any, about methdological soundness, and you of course can't do a whole lot of critical evaluation, but it can start showing you general trends and common findings--especially if you need to acquaint yourself with a vast literature in a short amount of time.

Large-scale abstract reviews coupled with in-depth readings of selected, comprehensive (as PositivelySkewed mentioned) and/or seminal articles has served me well numerous times in the past.

 

[smalltownpsych]

There's also something to be said for (gasp) just reading large numbers of abstracts. It isn't going to give you much information, if any, about methdological soundness, and you of course can't do a whole lot of critical evaluation, but it can start showing you general trends and common findings--especially if you need to acquaint yourself with a vast literature in a short amount of time.

Large-scale abstract reviews coupled with in-depth readings of selected, comprehensive (as PositivelySkewed mentioned) and/or seminal articles has served me well numerous times in the past.

You mean I was supposed to read more than just the abstracts!

 

[psychrat]

I sometimes just read the intro, abstract, and discussion if pressed for time.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I sometimes just read the intro, abstract, and discussion if pressed for time.

Ditto on this as well; even more so than with abstracts, reading introductions to a few papers in a subject area can be a great way of quickly orienting yourself to relevant findings/trends and gathering a list of references to pull for more information.

 

[psychstudent90]

Thanks to everyone who has responded, I wasn't expecting so many responses! You've given me some great strategies and suggestions that I'll definitely be putting into place, so thank you.

Just another quick question for everyone - do you print your readings out to read them, or just read them on your laptop/tablet? I have been printing them out up until now, but feel as though I'm wasting a lot of ink and paper, so thinking of switching to reading on my laptop. Thanks everyone!

 

[smalltownpsych]

Thanks to everyone who has responded, I wasn't expecting so many responses! You've given me some great strategies and suggestions that I'll definitely be putting into place, so thank you.

Just another quick question for everyone - do you print your readings out to read them, or just read them on your laptop/tablet? I have been printing them out up until now, but feel as though I'm wasting a lot of ink and paper, so thinking of switching to reading on my laptop. Thanks everyone!

I printed them out and even bought a black and white laser printer for that purpose. I can't read dense material very well on a computer and especially when I need to be able to flip back and forth a bit. Also makes it easier to read in comfortable positions and places.

 

[cara susanna]

I read them on my laptop for the most part.

 

[psychstudent90]

Just realised I never responded to these, sorry - not my style! I ended up reading them on my computer screen, and only reading the essential readings Thanks for your help!