Hatrack River Forum: grad school support thread

This is topic grad school support thread in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by RivalOfTheRose (Member # 11535) on :

Does anyone have any tips for getting through the doldrums of required reading?

Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :

Simple: Go to grad school in a real subject, like physics. Then you needn't worry about required reading.

Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :

Heh. My friend in an English PhD program has a little html counter in her livejournal....

Posted by Herblay (Member # 11834) on :

I have one. Only go to grad school for a subject you love. Then, you should find most of the reading interesting.

I wish I could take my own advice. Unfortunately, I'm in grad school for Business Administration. That means I have to take accounting. I hate accounting.

[Grumble]

Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :

It sucks. I hate it. Especially when you are near the end of your program and find yourself reading the same theorists over and over so it is just so repetitive.

Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :

Skim skim skim. I have usually about 700 pages of assigned reading a week (my high this semester was around 1300), which I maintain is physically impossible to do when I'm also teaching a 120 person class for the first time and supposed to be reading about 30 extra books for papers. So I skim.

The worst are articles. It's fine to have a 400 page book a week for a class, because its just one argument. 400 pages of articles or book excerpts a week is ridiculous though. 9 different articles which may or may not be in conversation with each other? Blech. Which of course is what I have to read. By tomorrow. So I plan on skimming [Smile]

Posted by Herblay (Member # 11834) on :

You can sometimes by "condensed" textbooks. There's a major Organizational Behavior textbook that weighs in at over 700 pages -- it has an "essentials" companion that's about 230 pages. You can read the companion and be fine.

I've had luck with Cliff's Notes as well.