<p>This semester, I coincidentally ended up picking mostly humanities classes. (Philosophy and sociology as the main ones, and French and a peer tutoring in composition class as kind of sub-humanities I think I've read)</p>
<p>I had more artsy classes last semester, so how should I prepare for the heavy reading and the main focus on tests? I've already gotten slammed with some reading, but I don't really have any approaches to consider.</p>
<p>As for the reading, it depends on the type of text book. If it’s an anthology, I typically skim it and underline what I feel is important. Also some things you read in an anthology also appear on sparknotes (but do not depend on that). If it’s a text book and there is a lot of reading, I either read it in chunks, or look for vocab (a lot of the words in textbooks are examples or further explanation of the vocab) and also check over the chapter summaries.</p>
<p>For my humanities class tests, I tended to rewrite my notes over or type them up, and then read them over again. Also, if you are given any sort of study guide with questions that could be on the exam or terms to identify, I would write the questions on a separate piece of paper and bulleting what points you want to make in a short answer or essay section. I also typically have someone quiz me on the terms or questions, and whatever else you might need. </p>
<p>It also depends on the type of test your professors give. Some use multiple choice and others have more open response. For open response I do the above. For multiple choice, I usually just type out or rewrite my notes, highlight just terms or topics and have someone quiz me.</p>
<p>Sociology isn’t a humanities course; it’s a social science course.</p>
<p>With the reading - try active reading. First of all leave yourself enough time to read everything; you can’t wait until the last minute. Second of all, in the humanities and social sciences the focus is often on themes and synthesizing information; you’ll be asked to tie things together and produce your thoughts on the work, supported by citations from the work itself or related works. It’s more than summarizing, and the point is to get you to think critically. To that end, also leave yourself time for thinking. Read the first/thesis paragraph, and think about what the author is trying to say/what he or she is trying to introduce you to. When I’m doing my readings, I keep a pack of Post-Its next to me; when I read something and have a thought/reaction to the text, I write it on a post-it and stick it on the page and keep going. (Now that I have an iPad, I usually annotate the PDF electronically. Same principle, though.) Read more slowly than you would a pleasure book or something, and absorb, especially if its theory.</p>
<p>When I’m done, I go over my post-its/annotations and write notes reacting to the piece as a whole and exploring those annotations. This also helps me prepare comments for the discussion to follow.</p>
<p>Be sure to pay attention to your professor’s opinions in class. I know some people may argue with me about this, but in my personal experience, it helps to regurgitate some of their views (in your own words) when your professor is particularly narrow minded. These classes (like philosophy) are less fact based and more interpretive, so knowing your teacher’s position is important.</p>
and thanks for the good advice!</p>