maybe this 'cramming' at the beginning of the semester may well be a good idea. What if you were to make this tagteam learning into a way of life? You'd become a learning/enlightenment machine.
from idea-seminars.com:
"Read one hour in your field per day and in 3 years you will be a top expert in your field. In 5 years you will be top expert in the country, and in ten years a top expert in the world."
Well, using that same logic, read 10 hours in your field per day and in ONE year, you'll be a top expert in the world!!! This would surely require a great sacrifice of time... but the payoff!
Also, you could potentially accumulate an enormous amount of meditation and paraliminal change each day.
...not a bad way to spend a year!
The only problem with a huge cram on one day, I was thinking, is that if you photoread during those 30 minute blocks then you would be activating the material the same day.
I'm trying to do things a little differently this semester by photoreading and postviewing all of my reading material for the semester within the first two weeks. Then, as Paul suggests, using the lectures as activation, then reading the matieral right after lecture.
I also (unfortunately) have the general attitude that my studies in school are a burden. I very much have to force myself to study for my classes.
Sometimes I don't know what people mean when they say 'study'.
Studying for me is the drudgery of learning that which you are forced to learn. 
