<<if you pr'ed the book and took notes from your pr/rrding, would your prof accept that you have indeed read the book? >>
I don't take notes, unfortunately...no mindmapping, no previewing or trigger words, nothing...I probably should, but I've gotten to the point where I don't need them (which says something about PhrSys actually working as opposed to the combination of the other steps thereof), so I've begun to lose my skills at it.
<<i know that underlining slows you waaay down, and a lot of things you underline seem important while reading but may not in fact be necessary knowledge when you've finished reading.>>
Exactly...I've been circling the word "God" and the number three for the past 4 friggen' days, and it's completely unimportant...well, the God one is interesting, but nothing I couldn't have noticed without circling it.
<<yet you don't actually remember any better than if you had just read through in the long run...>>
I will admit that it anchors it better...not so much that I don't remember it, but actually circling repetitions of words helps me remember every single time that word has appeared. Like I just read Erec and Enide, and having circled the color "white" repeatedly, I know basically every single instance it occured, and the theme because of that. I know it sounds obvious, but the way I interpreted it is much more subtle than the more obvious "innocence" theme, and I don't think I would've gotten it without having circled it a thousand times.
Of course, I circled the number three repeatedly, and that got me absolutely nowhere.
In other words, I wasted time.
<<how about this...instead of underlining, put appropriate sized brace brackets on the outside margins of the book from the topmost lines you want to note, to the bottommost ones; in a sense, you draw a box around the important sentences, without actually underlining. >>
I kinda do this...I circle or underline very quickly a passage or word (isn't it weird that it's faster to circle a word than it is to underline it?) and in the margin I note why I did it. It gets messy, but still very legible, since I use bright colors and you can still clearly see the black text underneath afterwards.
I like all the suggestions given, and they've been very helpful.
I've started to calm down about it, though, because even though it's at a much slower pace, it's like I've done ten seperate element dips at one time, and even though I have to sort it out later, it saves me the time from having to dip a second time for the elements I covered (still much much slower, but more adaquate than I gave it credit for).
Plus I can still dip after I'm done for other things.
I guess what I'm getting at is, it's excrutiatingly slow and sometimes unnecessary (the number 3), but it has its merits and is a valuable method to learn for a different application.
But I'm sorry, FOUR DAYS is way too long to spend on a book (not at one time, but you get what I mean).
I'm finding it works particularly well on my logic stuff, however, since sometimes I can't really even rapid read that stuff anyway (too dense sometimes...like a giant math problem).
Thanks all.
-Ramon http://razor.ramon.com
