<p>I'm reading a psychology packet that was written by my psychology professor, a.k.a. the driest, most horrifically monotone and unengaging human being that has ever walked the face of the planet. I literally want to inflict harm upon myself to make sure that I am still living while he lectures. I just read 10 pages, and I can't remember a thing that I read. It isn't that it is particularly difficult to understand -- other than the unnecessarily large words that are thrown in just to try to convince us that he is intelligent -- but it is just SO monotone. There is nothing interesting in it. It is written like this. Fact after fact is presented in this way. There are over thirty pages that I am supposed to read tonight alone that are just like this. And I'm supposed to remember it all. It is like reading a bulleted outline with fact after fact after fact listed. And then being tested on how well you remember thousands of these dry facts. Would it kill him to throw in an adjective somewhere? How about choosing a different sentence structure for a change?</p>
<p>How the HELL am I supposed to do this?!!?!? How do you focus when the material is just so poorly written and you literally CANNOT focus at all? Do I have ADHD or something, or is this normal? I should be able to focus if I really put my mind to it, but I just CAN'T!!!</p>
<p>welcome to college. you don’t necessarily have to do all the reading to pass classes or do well in the exams. now if the readings are required for you to write papers, then yea you have to man up and just read the material. however if it’s just for discussion purposes, you’d be surprised, you can probably get by in the class without doing much reading from the textbooks/packets. just learn early on that you can’t do everything that’s asked of you. you will not always get to each reading. and you won’t always find everything interesting. if there are other things on your mind that are keeping you from reading, take care of that then go back to the reading.</p>
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You signed up for intro psychology why? Drop and add. Find another course of greater interest to you. Likely you are taking this course to meet a science requirement…there are better ways.</p>
<p>Why don’t you try rewriting it in a more interesting way? I have trouble with that kind of monotone writing style, and I’ve had a few textbooks I hated that were like that. I don’t really care about having all kinds of pictures and boxes and so on so that the page looks interesting (although apparently textbook publishers disagree with me), but I’d like some lively writing. Ultimately, what has worked for me is to put the material into a form that I’m interested in reading. I don’t necessarily have to rewrite every paragraph and end up with something that’s just as long, but I do need to figure out which are the key points and how things fit together, and writing a document of my own not only means I’m forced to do those things but also means that later on when I’m reviewing I don’t have to read the same boring text again.</p>
<p>Having said that, it is possible that you do not actually have to remember every single thing. If you google something like “how to read in college” you will find explanations of how to read more quickly and get the key points. You will eventually need to figure out how much you need to get out of these packets for this course (and, if psychology is relevant to your major or a significant interest of yours, for your own mastery of the subject). Most classes offer a balance between breadth (how much is covered) and depth (in how much detail), and if you’re in a freshman-level psychology class you are likely to be toward the breadth end of the spectrum. It may be that every sentence in this guy’s writing is supposed to be a single gem you will need to appreciate for its own sake, but it may also be that if you skim the first sentence of each paragraph you will be okay. I would suggest going for depth if this is the first reading assignment like this, recognizing that 30 pages is not a lot of text, and then seeing how much work you could have skipped without consequence.</p>
<p>I’d also suggest figuring out some way to keep the material interesting for you, whether it’s using Netflix and hosting a movie night once a week with a film that somehow relates to what’s on the syllabus, or looking for case studies you can investigate in depth, or redecorating your dorm room door every weekend to reflect what you’ve learned that week. Since your professor isn’t going to keep you fascinated, you’ll need to do it yourself; if you let yourself become too bored it’s going to be all but impossible to learn much or get a decent grade.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions everyone… Please keep them coming!!</p>
<p>I guess that I am extra concerned because the scholarship that I was given requires that I maintain 3.5 GPA and that I get no lower than a 3.2 in any class… Which is like a B+. I know that by CC standards, that is trivial, but for a first-year college student like me, that is really nerve-wracking, especially when a lot of my course grades are based entirely on 1 or 2 tests. :-/</p>
<p>in college most of your grade is determined by 1 or 2 tests. it’s not just a freshman year thing or something that goes on in your school only. it sucks but once you adjust to it you’ll do good. just take care of what you have to do, and you should be good.</p>
<p>A lot of material you read will be dry. You just have to learn to push yourself through it. Are you just going to drop a course every semester to avoid this, especially if you have to fulfill requirements?</p>
<p>I actually found that to be quite rude. I was asking for suggestions as to how to actually absorb material that I seem to be having a difficult time with. Having a 3.98 GPA in high school (including all AP courses offered at my school) hardly suggests that I am a slacker. You think I’ve never read something that I found to be a bore or uninteresting? Ha! This packet of material in this psychology course was simply giving me trouble, and I was actually legitimately concerned that I may have adult ADD or some other neuropsychological disorder.</p>
<p>And I never said that I was going to drop the class, hence why I was asking for advice IN the course, not advice for how to drop it…</p>
<p>is the reading assignment an introduction to the entire course? if that is the case, you will pick up the things as you go. And maybe, you’ll go “oh yea, I remember reading that 2 weeks ago!”</p>
<p>as has been mentioned… you don’t have to read everything that is assigned. Sometimes, you don’t even have to look at it. However, sometimes you do. I’ve had tests that come completely from class notes, and tests that come completely from outside readings.</p>
<p>When you read a bit, perhaps googling it will bring up more interesting material on the topic.</p>
<p>I took several years of speech training and one of the lectures was on finding interesting things about mundane topics. If we were given a speech assignment on a pencil, we’d have to come up with a six minute presentation that was interesting to others and the way to do a speech interesting to others is to make sure that it is interesting to yourself.</p>
<p>Sometimes anecdotes and personal experiences serve to illustrate a concept, idea or fact and digging a little deeper into the required material with your own discovered material will help you to absorb it and provide you with ready examples should the professor offer questions to the class or should there be an in-class essay assignment.</p>
<p>One other thing is that RateMyProfessor.com can be helpful if there is a choice of professors to choose from. You might also want to add your comments after the semester to warn others that may not like the dry and boring stuff.</p>
<p>I work really well on a reward system, e.g., I read something horrid for a half hour, I spend ten minutes doing something I want to do, etc. Read five pages or wherever there is a clean break in the text, then take a break, eat dessert, whatever makes you happy.</p>