I have been pretty neglectful of blogging this summer, but I am glad to say......
There is a plan, hallelujah, there is a plan. A plan, that is, that covers the next two years of my life and gets me out on the job market (which will be totally recovered by then, right? Right?).
Last time I was here, I was bragging about my realized love for list making. Like I said, I am not a natural organizer and it takes a lot of work for me to develop any sort of organizational process, and even more work to stick to it.
But I am embarking on the reading for my Qualifying Exams, an endeavor that will surely become a clusterfuck of epic proportions if I don't lasso it in and organize. I've just started my reading and it is already a mess; notes are everywhere, half-finished summaries are sitting on my computer, and I'm reading at random (see clusterfuck above). So I am reaching out for help from you, all my dear readers and hoping my slim to none readership didn't fall away as I have this summer. I am asking for any tips or helpful hints on how to manage the reading of a massive amount of books for Qualifying Exams. I have all the texts on a list, but I'm thinking of making a spreadsheet that would...well, and now the questions begin. The list that I have to submit to my department will separate the readings by category, so maybe the spreadsheet should list the order of reading? Should I even read my texts in a specific order? How did you best organize your notes? What do you wish you would have known when you started the reading process? What was most helpful?
Any help? Please? I will take anything.
Lists are a necessity. Make lists of what you need to read and cross them off as you go. Nice sense of accomplishment. I kept mine right next to my computer, taped up to the wall.
ReplyDeleteI worked by subject area. 4 subject areas, 3 quarters. That gave me 2 subject areas per quarter with another quarter to shore up any gaps, review, revise and review some more. Adjust as your timeframe allows.
Notes were an absolute necessity. I started taking notes on the computer but found that it became easier to simply write them out. I was spending way too much time writing notes as I read, then converting them to computer documents later that I just got rid of the computer step.
The large, ruled Moleskine notebooks were a lifesaver. Easily carried around, easy to write in (they stay open and flat!) and easy to flip through, I brought it with me pretty much everywhere. Every time I started a new article, it got a new page. New book? New page. Having a single (or, by the end, two) book(s) to refer to for notes was incredibly useful.
That said, take notes as soon as possible. If I waited even a week, I found that I'd often forgotten much of what I initially thought was interesting or important.
As far as order goes... It was very useful for me to read primary sources first, then secondary ones. I don't know if this is an issue for you.
Things I wish I'd known at the outset....
-If you think a book is going to be extremely important to you, buy it. Then mark it up as much as you see fit. Failing that, use sticky notes.
-SKIM.
-If you don't know what you should be focusing on in a given book, ask your advisor - they're the one's who'll theoretically be asking the questions on it, anyhow...
-Summarize articles immediately. As in right after you finish it. Unless it's a seminal piece, just jot down the thesis, any points that really jumped out at you, and some comments on whether or not you thought it was complete BS. Then move the hell on to the next one.
-Remember that on your exam, you'll likely need to have intimate knowledge of a few key works. Everything else is largely background. Spend your time where it will pay off most. If you can't decide where that is, pick a few (5 -10) pieces you can be reasonably assured can be worked into the majority of your responses and know them backwards and forewards.
I hope that's useful... I just sort of spat out anything that came to mind. If you want to ask anything else, just shoot me an email. (waywardclassics AT gmail DOT com)
Hello! I'm currently working on a Doctorate and so haven't had to wage a battle of this magnitude, but I did have a great system for my MA exams.
ReplyDelete1. Take J. Harker's advice. It's good.
2. I, like J. Harker, kept a checklist of readings handy so that I could track my progress. It helps to refer to it when you're overwhelmed.
3. I had a single .DOC in which I kept a type of annotated bibliography of each reading. For novels (My MA is in English), I tracked author, publication date, major literary movements, secondary sources, and any key words related to the discussion on the novel.
4. I also kept a three ring binder with all of the detailed reading notes so that I didn't have to type everything up. I would summarize my reading notes into the annotated bib at the end of each reading.
5. Once I felt comfortable with the readings, I had random friends throw out terms (community, feminism, Post-Colonial, etc.). I would spout back a quick argument referring to specific scenes from at least three of the readings. This mini-quiz was great. When I took the exams, I found several of the same ideas my friends brought up.
6. I asked professors in my department for studying advice. One told me to take advantage of Cliff's Notes as a starting point for the novels. I'm not sure how well this translates to other disciplines, but it was the smartest thing I did.
I'm not fond of marking books -- it smacks of sacrilege to me. And besides, I have to borrow from the library many more books than I could afford to buy, so I'm not at liberty to mark them up anyway. I also don't like writing notes and/or summaries in longhand; my hands stopped writing in favor of typing many years ago.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite tactic to handle both of these problems at once is to read a book or article with the computer at my side, and type in notes as I go. When I come to a particularly enlightening/enraging/puzzling passage that seems worth thinking about after I no longer possess the book, I type the whole damn thing in as a block quote. Once I've done that, it feels very comfortable and natural to write my own commentaries underneath, make note of important sources the author cites, etc. I've come to like this method so much that I generally use it even with books that I own.
This may sound like extra work, but in my discipline, at least, qualifying exams usually involve long essay answers to questions that must include numerous citations to an interconnected world of writings. Since you may find yourself writing your quals, as I did, in the space of three days, you do not want to be hunting around your private library swearing like a longshoreman, looking for that illuminating passage you need while the clock runs down. You want to be able to open a file, copy and paste the quotation, and then copy and past the exact bibliographic citation that you typed in when you were merrily reading for your exams. You may even find that the notes and commentaries you wrote to yourself will lend themselves easily to body text in your exam responses.
The guiding principle in all of this is: do as much of the work ahead of time as you can, so that you can devote yourself in your exams to ordering your thoughts in an elegant and readable fashion.
Good advice here so far.
ReplyDeleteI found working with a couple peers really helpful on several occasions (prepping for the GRE and later for my quals). I "got" "Tintern Abbey" because one of my peers loved it and could help me see why.
I also prepped specifically for the sort of exam I was taking. So for the GRE, Masterworks was useful for longer novels, for example, because you partly need to recognize names or plot bits quickly. But my quals were oral, so I practiced specifically talking about stuff. If my quals had been written, I would have written practice exams, say once a week, including new stuff as I read it.
It sounds like your department doesn't provide a list? That's difficult, but I would read canon stuff (use anthologies, for example) and also the most interesting and useful extra-canonical stuff.
(My grad department dropped lists, and just somehow expected we would know what to read, so most people used old lists, and that worked okay.)
Good luck :)
There has been a lot of good advice already posted. However, if you are a technophile like I am, I prefer using a good computer program to store all of my notes. Instead of using Word, I use a program called OneNote. It usually comes in the Microsoft Office pack but people don't realize what it is. Essentially, it is a virtual notebook that you can divide into sections, create pages, and subpages. I currently use it to organize my notes for all of my grad classes and I love it.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for the useful advice! To see how others got through it is really, really helpful and kind of humanizes the whole experience.
ReplyDeleteBardiac: Nope, my department does not provide lists. It us up to the student, with help from their examiners, to come up with a list. There are some old ones floating around, but no one has done my particular area in a long time.
So far, it seems my biggest problem is note taking. When I read fiction, I prefer to handwrite notes, and when I read theory or secondary materials, I like to take notes on the computer. For these exams, I would like all my notes to be in one place, so I guess I'll need to pick my poison.
Crazy Cat: I'm not familiar with OneNote, but I will definitely check it out!
I had a cumbersome, but ultimately effective, system: I prefer to handwrite notes as I go. But they're hard to work with after. So I handwrote notes for several months, then about a month before my exams, I mostly stopped reading and turned to typing. (I did keep reading up til the end, but on a much reduced schedule; a book every couple of days as opposed to several books a day [skimming, obviously].)
ReplyDeleteThe retype brought everything back into my mind in a very effective way. Then, during the last few days, I reduced again--I typed up 2-3 pages worth of *absolutely key points*, things I wanted to look at immediately before going into the exam.
I am into spiral-bound notebooks. I have tried to switch to other methods--more technically advanced and efficient methods--but I think it's in my nature to use spiral bound notebooks. I have three so far for my dissertation, and I'm starting the fourth. They have text notes and quotations, random ideas, miniature essay, outlines, and ideas for chapter titles. When I'm procrastinating, I love to think about chapter titles . . .
ReplyDeleteI will probably type them all in the computer at some point, but for the shorter pieces I'm writing now, I tend to flip through them and mine them for information.
When I took my exams a few years ago, I had a copy of my lists that I could mark up. I took some satisfaction crossing stuff off, but I also tried to draw connections -- obvious references, completely random parallels, etc. It was a mess by the end, but it helped me track some connections I don't think I'd have made had I the leisure time to just work through such a reading list in my own time.
ReplyDeleteI also reviewed my notes from past classes -- ones for which I was a student or an instructor. If I remembered the salient details of the work, and I could fill out the sketchy information in my summaries, I considered the book re-read or reviewed, and I moved on to something new. It was a welcome break from just reading (or re-reading) texts, and it offered a bit of nostalgia as I saw what I thought in the past. Do re-read the major works in your field, though; if you're having trouble identifying them, ask your examiners what they think are the key texts or (and this might be better) think about what they teach whenever they can, or what they enjoy discussing most -- that is, what texts they always bring up. It's a good indicator of what they'll ask you to discuss in your exam.
I don't know how much this will help you, but I wanted to throw it out with all of the other great advice that's already been offered!
Good luck!
-KR