Does the professor expect me to read 4 books, 300 pages each, for like a 7 week summer semester?
Why?
Any advice?
I just transferred to UC Berkeley from a community college and never experienced this. What should I do? This is for a history course (Europe 1914-present)
That sounds pretty reasonable for a college course. That’s only 1200 pages, or the equivalent of reading Les Mis or War and Peace in 7 weeks. I know of high school teachers that have assigned worse.
Set goals for yourself based on the deadlines for the books. Assuming you have no specific deadlines for each book, you should read 25 pages a day to keep pace. That’s about a chapter a day depending on the book.
While it may be only 7 weeks, I suspect it’s a full semester course compressed into a shorter timeframe. That’s how my D’s school does it. She has taken both 4 and 8 week courses (just finished a 4 week today). They have a tool that allows you to figure how many hours of work you will have per week - class, labs, study, homework, etc. For the 8 week session they double the number and for the 4 week they quadruple it.
So you have a full course in half the time. You should expect to work twice as much as you would in a normal semester. 1200 pages is a lot, but history courses are notorious for lots of reading. Doing that over 15-16 weeks sounds reasonable, and now you have to double that rate of work. That’s why a “full load” is typically 2 or 3 courses for this timeframe.
That’s how summer courses are. It’s difficult to keep up with the reading but you agree to do it when you sign up for the class.
Give yourself 2 hour reading blocks throughout the day
IMO that is not at all unreasonable. This is a college course taken in a compressed timeframe.
It’s reasonable to pretty light for a semester course in history. It’s harder for the summer since it’s compressed and you cover 14 weeks-worth of material in only 7 weeks… which is why I suspect the professor cut the number of books (6 per semester wouldn’t be rare in history, depending on the type of books, I’ve had up to 10.)
Look up “how to read” online and use the “business study skills” on crash course videos or use a system that’ll teach you how to use the table of contents, the introduction, the conclusion, etc. Take notes about everything that matters in terms of theme, points, and examples that illustrate a point.