I have been assigned to write an essay on the Great Gatsby, a 189 page novel for my high school English class. The topic is "Does Fitzgerald depict time as an enemy of humans and humanity? If yes, explain how and why. If not, what is the nature of the relationship that he depicts between humans and time?" My teacher suggested that I do a single "skim" through the novel and note down important passages/quotes. She thought that this would probably be do-able in 40 minutes or so.
Having the skills of PhotoReading and Mind Mapping at my disposal, however, I figured that I'd be able to easily do the same thing 20 minutes. I have just spend over twenty minutes, however, and I'm only to page 60. Why? I feel like I did a pretty good job of constraining my dipping only to relevant passages. Did I superread too slowly? If so, how can I make myself go faster while still retaining the ability to spot important places to dip down? I think the Mind Mapping is slowing me down a bit, too. Changing colors, drawing lines, and capping and uncapping markers compared to just writing down regular notes single pen simply takes more time.
I find the Mind-Mapped end-result much more friendly, and the process more structurally logical and fun, however, even without taking the time to embellish with lots of little drawings.
Having gotten to page sixty, my Mind Map is not huge; I 9 page references, each with a keyword or two to trigger the meaning, context, and releance to my developing thematic analysis.
If I haven't even gotten past sixty pages in super reading/dipping a single book, how could I possibly do the syntopic process for a larger research project involving multiple sources? Sure it would be faster if I didn't Mind Map at the same time, but if I waited until after a first pass to Mind Map the relevant passages, I am not confident that I would be able to quickly remember, let alone find them all.
I am really looking forward to resolving these issues, thereby transforming the prospect of writing research/analytical essays from a time-consuming burden into a fun, quick and easy affair. Thus far, I am disappointed to say, this has not been my experience even though I think that I am following just about every PhotoReading rule mentioned in the book.
