<p>100 pages of reading for Thursday from 2 classes. Ugh. And it's not like the reading is even remotely interesting.</p>
<p>I'm a freshmen, but if you looked at my schedule you would never be able to tell because there is only 1 true freshmen class that I'm taking, and there are tons of people who put it off til sophomore, junior or even senior year!</p>
<p>Oh well. Nothing I can do about it!</p>
<p>So you come on CC and procrastinate xD</p>
<p>I have an entire book by thomas hobbes to read in two days, plus 200 pages of vietnamese history, plus 150 pages of bio anthro, and a spanish test. Yeah let’s see how that goes. XD</p>
<p>Doesn’t your syllabus outline the entire semester’s reading/study questions/etc. schedule before hand? Mine do, so even though it would work out that I’d have to read a total of 150+ pages “assigned” on a Tuesday and “due” on that Thursday, I simply read as much as possible over the weekends, sometimes 1-2 whole weeks at a time. Yeah, it sucks to spend your weekends reading, but then I’m not stressed all during the week.</p>
<p>Nope. Neither of the syllabuses outline the reading at all.</p>
<p>Son read the books for one course, 1/3rd of the textbook for another course, half the assigned reading for another course and the textbook for his fourth course arrives tomorrow. His classes start next week.</p>
<p>My daughter has read the two books for two courses and the third has no text. Her fourth course text just arrived and she’s busy reading it right now though there is no way that she will finish it before classes start.</p>
<p>You get a month break and spending some of it reading ahead of time should make the actual semester easier as you have the overview and less time pressure.</p>
<p>I agree with following that strategy when you can do it, that’s what I did for Fall semester. I got two weeks of break before Winter semester started and my professors didn’t post the textbook until after the first session. I normally do at least half of every assignment for the week over the weekend before to make the reading during the week manageable, but sometimes that isn’t manageable either.</p>
<p>I dropped the hobbes class for an easier theory class, which was actually an advisory prerequisite I thought I had and didn’t. So now I only have one and a half really reading heavy courses, and I am only hideously behind in one class. Thank you, election! To office hours I go. I have a month to catch up before the midterm.</p>
<p>I envy schools that post booklists early. For the fall, I managed to get my textbooks about a week early and did some readings. In winter, none of the lists were up until two days before class. Ugh.</p>
<p>What I did instead: look at all of the syllabi (well, except for the numerous professors who didn’t hand their out until TODAY, two weeks into the semester) and note the readings. [Just noticed your syllabi doesn’t outline the readings. Now that you’ve started, can you get an idea of what you’ll be doing? If it’s a textbook, try to match chapters with lecture titles. As for literature, well, you just read it all. :P] During the first week when the workload is lighter than usual, try to get at least two weeks ahead of schedule. Use weekends to move ahead another week. Make sure to take notes so you don’t have to re-read anything! And if the textbook isn’t interesting, either divide it up into tiny sections (reward yourself with some M&Ms or something for every page or pay yourself per chapter so you can buy a nice treat) or work with a friend to read half and summarize. (That works better for textbooks and not literature, of course.)</p>
<p>Both of my kids’ schools have the course books listed at the bookstore and they can be accessed online. The bookstore has a deadline for professors to specify the texts for their courses so that they can order them so that they arrive in time for classes. Of course some professors miss the deadline and the texts aren’t available the first day of class.</p>
<p>The only disadvantage of buying the text early is if you decide to drop the course.</p>
<p>One other case where you can’t do this is if course registration is late. A coworker told me that Cornell course registration starts January 18 for upperclassemen. That doesn’t leave any time to order books online before courses start so it’s pretty hard to figure out that the course and section that you want will be available when you are allowed to register. Courses can get canceled too. The reason we waited so long on ordering one of our son’s books was that there were only four signed up for the course and we were worried that it would get canceled. Then there were a flood of grad students that registered and enrollment went up to 15 so we ordered the book.</p>
<p>I was told over the summer that they are transitioning from recommending to requiring that professors include the text in the course description in the guide for the semester so that students can consider the textbook (and associated cost) when selecting courses, but no such luck this semester. We have book lists at the book store too, but not until the professor bothers to submit them, and they waited until the first or second week of January when classes started the 6th. </p>
<p>I am pretty sure I just paid $80 for a course pack filled with almost all public domain works, but there was no way to see what all was in the course pack without buying it. Ugh.</p>
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<p>who doesn’t?</p>
<p>Good-luck with that- its not as bad as it could be though. I’ve heard tales about professors that require five books to be read in a week. Good-luck!</p>
<p>I’ll trade with you. I have 1 - 100 class, 3-200 level classes, and 1 - 400 level class. I’m a first-year. They’re all humanities courses with at least 100 pages of reading each per class period. Ugh.</p>
<p>Last semester I was taking three 300 level poli sci courses (one was cross listed with a 400 lvl asian studies course) and a 200 level science with lab. I was a junior, at least, but I had come from community college… you know, where I hadn’t had to pick up a book outside of math and science the entire time. xD I had at least 200 pages per class per day. I held on for dear life and didn’t end up able to do most of the reading. Which is why I just swapped classes, I don’t want to repeat that. lol.</p>
<p>Now I have a 100 level poli sci, a 200 level history, a 400 level poli sci, a 100 level spanish, and a 300 level anthro bio. I think it’ll be better. I got rid of a 300 level class and replaced it with a 100. :D</p>
<p>I’ve got 4 200-levels and 1 100-level (gen ed requirement) as a second semester freshman. Last semester it was 2 200-levels and 3 100-levels. We’ll see how it goes! Doesn’t seem too bad as of right now.</p>
<p>I had the rest of my classes today…</p>
<p>English (perspectives on lit) will be a lot of reading, I can tell. I don’t know/can’t gauge exactly how much yet because my prof hasn’t yet decided on the readings/schedule. Three papers, a midterm and a final.</p>
<p>A&P isn’t gonna be that bad. My prof makes it so that on every exam the class has an average in the 70s even if it means adding points to everyone’s grade. She also doesn’t believe in pluses and minuses, so if you have a 70, you have a C which is what I need in the class.</p>
<p>History (my only freshmen class) is gonna be a piece of cake, but I knew that already since I had the same prof for the first part last semester.</p>