Hi BlkWlf,
Sorry I didn't get back to your questions earlier - I had an incredibly busy weekend.
You asked, "Do you think that the class itself was your activation vs manually activating the book?"
I would have to answer this as no, not exactly. The material in the books, for the most part, concerned the deeper underlying reasons for what we learned in class. The general effect that I got (and remember I started learning PRing while I was in the class, so I was a complete newbie) was that I got intuitions and insights into the techniques I was learning - I guess you could say the reading formed a foundational layer below what I learned in class, and class itself helped to create associations with what I PRed.
In other words, it wasn't like activation. When it was all said and done, I didn't "know" the content of each of the books - I couldn't point to a specific book and say, "Oh, yeah, this material was covered in chapter 4 of that book."
A large part of this may have been to do with my stated purpose, which was to build an unconscious foundation for what I was learning in class.
My advice would be to play with it. Lately I've been PRing my college textbooks with the purpose of sponteously activating them when I need the info. Results are varied so far but encouraging and I've been using Personal Genius with the goal of increasing spontaneous activation skills which seems to be helping.
Good Luck!
Mike
