>>7736436
underload your courses if its that much of a big deal. you can learn to not subvocalize but you will probably kill your soul in the process.

I don't know if it's common, but I'm in the same kind of situation. I'm no Slacker, I put in hours every night, but I'm rarely ever caught up.

I do have the suspicion professors know they are assigning more than you'll get around to.

History Major btw

School is meant to be your primary focus. Many don't take into account that some students are adults with family obligations, and so on.

I do the best I can, but make time for myself and family. Work hard, but don't beat yourself up if you're not earning a 3.9 every semester.

Life is more important than grades.

Are you an English major? No reason to be taking two English courses at a time otherwise.

Go to your professors's office hours and ask what themes in the books you should be focusing on.

That should give you an idea of how much you need to read, if you can skim, etc.

Office hours are the best tool you have available to you-- and nobody uses them.

You can get by in a lot of classes just by attending lecture and asking questions during office hours

>>7736495
>Office hours are the best tool you have available to you-- and nobody uses them.
>You can get by in a lot of classes just by attending lecture and asking questions during office hours
What the fuck do you dweebs do during these hours?

>>7736505

Gasspost on /lit/

>>7736495
>You can get by in a lot of classes just by attending lecture

I passed Medieval Literature without reading ANY of the texts because of this. It was tough times during that semester so I couldn't focus at all on reading, especially medieval english.

>>7736495
English major

>>7736475
The main reason I'm worried/concerned is because I want to get the most out of my education. Guilty because I don't have the mental energy to do so.

>>7736436
>>7736461
Lots of professors have made peace with the reality of students not reading everything. This is why so many exams are designed so that you don't have to refer to every work assigned in the semester, so long as you read a few and can refer to those.

>>7736436

Hello OP. I had this.

I am a fairly slow reader. <blogpost> Although I have been able to read since I was three, and read Dr. Seuss to my mother at that age, and subsequently had a typical /lit/ childhood reading hundreds of books, my digestive process has always been slow. I tend to go back over half-paragraphs after I've already been, learning a page before moving on. I know that I have good reading comprehension, as well as a lack of dyslexia or other things. It's just always taken a bit longer.

I eventually completed a STEM major accompanied by two /lit/-tier minors for personal interest: history and philosophy. I literally actually read somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of what was minimally assigned to me for those, and "hummed" my way through group discussions. It was just too fucking much, and I did start to resent the pace after a while. I only got about 200 pages into Democracy in America before we fucked off to the next thing. I just couldn't read that shit in a week AND do a normal daily routine.

Later in undergrad, when I got sharper about basic adult follow-through tactics, I had a technique of gently pestering my profs for their reading lists ahead of time, and I'd do as much as I could to get ahead of their material ahead of time. It helped somewhat.

this thread looks promising.

>>7736442
>underload your courses if its that much of a big deal. you can learn to not subvocalize but you will probably kill your soul in the process.

This is it, pretty much. Either way, if you can't push yourself to longer study, you need to read less—either by opening fewer books, or shutting books much faster. You must forgo the sweetness of slow and deliberate reading, and skim books with hasty irreverence; or you must be content with a narrow scope, and forgo the wisdom that comes with a full prospect. Both are somewhat viable methods for passing courses; skimming is good for short answer tests, savouring is better for essays, but you can get by with either.

Each man has his own inclination. Some like to know a lot, but have no great desire to look at things too closely. Others have no wish to be widely learned, and only want to thoroughly absorb a few good things. Both methods provide ample material for thought; each brings its own danger of ignorance. The important thing is total time spent reading, and this will depend on how much you enjoy reading—so do it however you like.

If you decide to read slowly, at least learn to skim the other books on the syllabus. Aim to give a really good reading to half the books required (whichever half you most enjoy), and a quick once-over to the other half, because you never know how unlucky you might get on an exam. If you're still overwhelmed, underload your courses and take things slowly. Take summer courses for easy marks. Better to graduate late than not at all.

As for reading more, are you going to the library at all? I find it impossible to read at home, so I get all my reading done on transit and at the library. Try going for a few hours in the morning and see how productive you can be.

Anyway, I'm still figuring it out for myself. I'm underloaded on courses and spend most of my time reading extraneous stuff, AND I'm behind in one of my courses. Yesterday I stayed at the library to read Dryden (irrelevant to my current courses) instead of attending class. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.

>>7736580
>The main reason I'm worried/concerned is because I want to get the most out of my education. Guilty because I don't have the mental energy to do so.

Put the disaster of failure out of your mind. Thinking about catastrophe and feeling guilty can lead to fatalism, and finally to defeatism—I know that it did for me, and I left the first university I attended after failing all my courses because I became overwhelmed and began to feel powerless.

Try to change the way you think about it. I stead of "I want to get the most out of my education", think, "I want to learn about X and I want to prove to my teacher that I've learned". Instead of "if I don't hand in this essay my life is ruined", think, "if I can't write an essay about Boethius, I'm an idiot."

The change you need to make is from caring about getting your money's worth to caring about your education. You should develop a desire to be knowledgable.

This, I would argue, can only stem from a manly love for history, philosophy, theology, poetry—which must come from a deep zeal for something (a religion, a political ideal, some great love or anger above mere interest). You must have a calling. Something beyond mere vanity—and especially more than fear—must command you to read and be wise.

Everybody says there's not enough time to read everything, but there almost always is. 30 pages of Dante is literally nothing. I've had to read 500 page books and write papers on them in two or three days and I found a way to get it done without cutting corners. Stop posting on 4chan, stop watching TV or playing video games, stop hanging out with friends, eat your meals alone and quickly, cut down on sleep, and spend all of that time doing work. The only legitimate excuse is that you're seriously dedicated to many extracurriculars, by which I mean SERIOUSLY dedicated, in which case you better be really good or really love it or else you're wasting your time. Alternatively, if you're working a full time job or raising a family or some other serious extenuating circumstance that's understandable to. But if all you're doing is going to school, there is absolutely no excuse for not doing all of the reading.

How much are you assigned? How much time do you spend on reading?

>>7737744
>Stop posting on 4chan, stop watching TV or playing video games, stop hanging out with friends, eat your meals alone and quickly, cut down on sleep, and spend all of that time doing work.

some of this is right and some is wrong

video games and friends, yes. sleep and meals, no. if you can't get sleep, you're doing something wrong and cutting in the wrong place. as for eating with people, there's nothing wrong with losing an hour or two each day to eating. I live with my family and cook for them every day, and I still have plenty of time for study.

I would say I read about 50-75% of my assigned readings in college. History major/English minor, graduated with a 3.4 GPA.

For what it's worth I had an active social life, was in a fraternity (was active there, so I always had jobs and events and such), had a light campus job (library job and writer for school newspaper), and I smoked way too much weed.

It seems like few people I knew actually did 100% of the readings.

>>7736436
English PhD here. I experienced this and now see it in my students. At my most foolish I was takign 6 English courses in a single semester in order to get through the reqs and finish sooner. This while also working part time and with wife and 2 kids. I feel your pain.

Once I accepted that I couldn't read everything I started making practical decisions about how and what to read. Since, in my experience, professors will put only material covered in class on exams, be sure to attend lectures and pay attention. Focus your reading, then, on what you need to write excellent essays. If you're reading something in Middle English (or even EM English), you can get through it more quickly with a modern paraphrase... then go to the original for important passages and close readings. If you have to spend a lot of time doing otherwise mindless work (e.g. I have a small farm now and spend a few hours daily doing that), listen to audiobooks to get through other readings. If you can make material from different classes overlap (i.e. writing an essay for one class with texts I knew from another).

I know what you mean about getting the most education from the experience as you can. For me, essay writing was my chance to get the most of it all... this is where I would make time to research more widely than required and try to tackle difficult concepts. This had the benefit of allowing me to spend more time on the topics/texts that were most interesting to me,

Best of luck with it all.

>>7737965
>PhD, 6 english courses at once, wife and 2 kids, jobs, end up with small farm

How the fuck did you do that?

I'm serious. I have motivation problem and often have trouble focusing. In the end I spend way too little time knuckling down on "work". I'm in school with $20 to my name but can't even bother myself to send out resumes.

How do you keep yourself going?

>>7737676
Underrated post

>>7738061
I think having a family helped with the motivation... if I fuck up then they suffer. Also, I was almost 10 years older than most of the students I was with, so my reason/experience of university was different. I slept little, but when I was 28 I could function on 4 hrs a night. I had no time for a social life, but between barista-ing and family, I didn't want any other socializing.

I dunno... I was doing the thing I wanted to do, so I was motivated to do it. The practical things I mentioned in my other post were arrived at of necessity, but they helped me to do well and scholarships followed, which motivated me further.

>>7738558
Do you have a professor position now? Also what country if you don't mind my asking

>>7736436
It's common to skip readings but IMO it is no excuse either. English major here, degree from top tier school, and I read 100% of the work I was assigned in college plus more for fun. I don't know many other people who did, but it is possible and in my mind, a worthy goal.

Ideas as to how to optimize it: drop unnecessary uses of time (ie games, internet, especially social media) or cut back on them as much as possible, stop procrastinating, and stop "studying" IE hanging out with friends, friends are for partying with not studying with. Experiment with sleep schedules, I found I did a lot of good work if I got up early and had a coffee when no one else was around. Experiment with little micro rewards - every page you read, eat a potato chip or a jellybean. Experiment with music / no music, library / home. Be aware of light level and temperature where you are reading, too warm and you may get sleepy, too dark and you'll have trouble focusing. Eat healthy, get some physical activity in, and avoid trying to study right after a big meal as you may find yourself in a food coma.

One strat I tried that other people found crazy - but which always worked for me - was to sit down at the beginning of the semester with all my syllabi and the reading dates and papers, and make a giant calendar/ chart / poster of what I'd need to read/write and when I would need to read/write it by. Work backwards from finals period to the beginning of the term and block it all out day by day, including flex time. To finish 100% of your work all you need to do is follow your calendar.

If you must skip readings, skip strategically (ie, nothing you need to write a paper on.)

Office hours are nice but should not be a substitute for actually doing the work.

I'll post more ideas if I think of them, thanks OP you made me nostalgic for college.