<p>I'm a freshman on day 3 of classes at my university. Already, I have tons of reading to do and essays to write. I can't see how people have social lives on top of doing all of this work. How am I supposed to have time to hang out and do other things, when it feels like all of my extra time I should be reading or catching up on classes or writing essays? Even on the weekends, they seem like prime time for doing work.</p>
<p>How do you balance work with actually having a life? College can't be as fun as everyone makes it seem to be if they're only doing work all the time.</p>
<p>For example, I have classes where a chapter or two of the textbook is covered every class or every week, so I make sure to read the chapter and take notes before the class so I'm prepared. Is this necessary, or am I giving myself extra work?</p>
<p>Whether that kind of preparation is necessary for a particular class depends on a lot: It depends on you, the professor, and the class in question. As such, only you can accurately make that call. Do you feel like reading ahead and taking notes before class is helping you? If it’s not helping you, you may want to reconsider going over things to that extent before class.</p>
<p>As a general tip, one of the biggest things to learn (as far as out of class stuff goes) is how to read efficiently. It’s not necessary to spend a lot of time reading every single sentence and making sure you understand it. What you need to do is learn to skim. To start, read the introduction and conclusion completely. From there, read the first and last sentence of each paragraph and try to get the main point of each paragraph. If you’re not sure what the point of the paragraph is after reading the first and last sentence, that’s when you skim the rest of the paragraph until you find the necessary information.</p>
<p>If you take notes while you’re reading, take notes efficiently. Meaning, don’t write down every detail; only write down the main concepts and any important details that are emphasized. It’s a similar idea to taking lecture notes: You don’t want to write down everything the professor says, because that’s inefficient and may keep you from fully understanding the point of the lecture. You want to note down the main points and emphasized details.</p>
<p>That said, in my personal experience it’s unnecessary to take notes on the reading. The exception to that is if what you’re reading about is something that you’re expected to know but won’t be covered in class. As I said earlier though, this depends on the person, class, and professor.</p>
<p>So to answer your question on how people have extra time: They’ve learned how to study efficiently and manage their time. You’ll get there at some point; admittedly, a big part of it is trial and error until you find what works for you and your schedule.</p>
<p>You also have optimal times of day when you are especially productive. You may have noticed this. For instance, you may not be able to work efficiently in the morning. Or you may only be able to work in the evening. A 3-hour reading in the afternoon may take you 6 hours in the morning because you are easily distracted, etc. So, you can structure your free time accordingly.</p>
<p>I completely disagree that it’s unnecessary to take notes on the reading. Research has shown time and time again that the physical act of writing something down is one of the best ways to retain information. Though it might not be necessary for certain classes where the professor assigns a simple article and all that’s needed is the main point, for most science classes, history courses, etc, notes are essential.</p>
<p>OP, is there any chance that you took on too challenging a course load? Maybe you can drop one of the classes with heavy reading and swap it for something with a lot less. But in any case, please don’t come to any conclusions based on a few days of school. You’ll get in the swing of things, develop a schedule for studying, discover where you have to put the most time and attention–it will come, give it a few weeks. “Overwhelmed” is actually kind of normal at this point. Don’t panic.</p>
<p>I also don’t think everyone has to take notes from reading. Everyone has a different learning style, and no single technique is best for all. In my case, stopping to jot down notes would have interrupted the flow and impeded my understanding–I found highlighting to be much more useful. But I did take copious notes in class because I could easily listen and write simultaneously. Whatever works…</p>
<p>I record the lecture and write down the notes off the powerpoint slides. He already has them online but since I can’t print them out yet, I’d prefer to retype them then highlight the main points in word. May sound like extra work but it works for me.</p>