<p>What do you do when your reading assignment is piled up?
I am currently taking summer classes and I have a week of reading piled up right now.
It's have to read about 4 chapters and its only about 10 pages a chapter but it's so painful.
And I don't understand why I can't read. I don't have problem with reading itself but when it comes to college text books, I am just STUCK. When I try to read textbooks, everything (food, relationships, family +all) comes up in my head prevents me from focusing on reading.
After I read, I don't know what I just read and I go back and read and reading a few pages this way takes up like a few hours and I just give up finishing the chapter for class and all the readings get piled up.
I seriously need to fix this. Reading textbooks was my biggest problem last year and brought my grade down so much. I really want to fix this problem this summer but I don't know what to do. </p>
<p>So my problem right now is,
I have so many chapters to read because I hadn't done the readings for class- how will I finish all these chapters?
And how can I focus on reading and how can I read textbooks?!</p>
<p>Go somewhere quiet. A library (many libraries have study rooms) or even the back corner of a local McDonald’s. Do your reading there to be free from distractions. Depending on what you’re studying, it may be helpful to read a more basic book first and then read your main textbook for clarification and filling in the details. If you’re taking chemistry and find the textbook rough-going, go get one of those Dummies books on chemistry and read the stuff that pertains to your class.</p>
<p>BTW, life is hard. Your parents may make it look easy but it’s darn hard. Now is the time to grow up. If you are old enough to go to college, you are old enough to force yourself to read. If you think this is hard, try making rent every month while putting food on the table and covering car repairs. Right now you have it easy, you have a support system in place but you won’t always have that.</p>
<p>Take it from somebody who was too immature their first attempt at college and failed miserably: you are in a very unique section of your life that will never come again, where you are old enough to actually study something useful and interesting but young enough to expect your parents to still support you. This won’t happen again, and college is not high school. You cannot coast through for four years and still get decent grades, and there is nobody standing at the finish line ready to hand you a job, you have to EARN a job just like everybody else, diploma or not.</p>
<ol>
<li>Put a piece of paper under each line as you read it (or under a section of lines). When you see the whole long page, it can be subconsciously intimidating. </li>
<li>Take notes as you read each paragraph.</li>
<li>Time yourself. See how long it takes you to read one page, and try not to let other pages take longer. Caution: This may cause you more trouble if you often find yourself skimming. Try it and see if it works for you.</li>
<li>Try mentally repeating each sentence while you read it (to keep you from thinking about other things).</li>
<li>After each paragraph/section, try to think of question you have relating to the topic, or some way in which what you just learned clarifies something you already knew.</li>
</ol>
<p>You shouldn’t be doing these all the time when you read (except #5 and maybe #2), but they can be good ways to start getting more concentrated.</p>
<p>I have that problem sometimes. Any time I read a main idea or main point I would write it on a sticky note and stick it to the page where it was written. Then I remembered better and it was quicker to scan over and refresh my memory.</p>
<p>Seriously i never read a single textbook as an undergrad (unless you count doing homework problems in math classes.)</p>
<p>Do your profs take their tests from the text or from lecture? If they take them from the lecture than put the book down and dont read… if they take their tests from the text then either drop them or dont take them again.</p>
<p>If you have some strange prof that teaches by the socratic method then drop his class… there is no reason to read textbooks as an undergrad, seriously they should be spoon feeding you the info that is on the tests and handing you study guides. If not then your school has a disconnect from mainstream pedagogy and it might be time to look at a different institution.</p>
<p>IMHO
I think the OP has a poor vocabulary and doesn’t know the meaning of the words in the reading passages.
His lack of comprehension stems from not knowing the meanings of key words in key phrases.
OP will need to devote lots of time to complete his reading assignments.
Unfortunately, he didn’t learn good study skills in high school and will suffer in college for it.
IMHO</p>