For those who know me well, it is no secret that I love school. I recognize that not everyone does, and that’s understandable, but if I could, I would be in school forever. Which, considering I will be pursuing a PhD and hopefully someday running a university department, I sort of will be in school forever.
Oftentimes I get asked how I have survived all the reading that comes with being a student in programs that require extensive research projects. I have picked up tips and tricks here and there and learned by experience, but I really wish someone would have spelled it out for me earlier on in my academic career. Therefore, I have decided maybe I would attempt to create a semi-organized “how-to” for reading those dense, academic texts that we all know and love.
1. HOW TO READ
We are taught as kids that we must read every single little word for maximum comprehension, which in general, is not true. When you encounter difficult and dense texts, you have to, have to, have to break them down.
For denser texts that you think are going to be more challenging to read, I suggest doing multiple “passes.” First, read the title, abstract, or introductory paragraph, and then read all the subheadings and the first sentence of each new section separated by the subheadings. This helps you become familiar with what the author will be arguing and how they have organized their arguments. Then, on the second read through, you can read everything in detail. This is the way I do it, but you can do more than two passes and break it down in the ways you prefer, just make sure you aren’t overwhelming yourself in the first skim.
The next thing I recommend when it comes to personal research (not so recommendable for class readings) is choosing chapters and sections in longer articles that will be most helpful for you. You most likely have not explicitly heard this, but you are allowed to pick the sections of an article or book that are pertinent to your research without reading the entire work they come from. It is impossible to read entire books for your college research papers when it’s finals week and you have four separate ten-page research papers to write!
When doing this, it is important to make sure you are not misinterpreting the context of the previous chapters or the argument of the book in general.
So…how do you do that?
Academic authors tend to account for this practice of “cherry-picking” chapters or sections of their works by providing summaries at the beginning and end of each chapter and explaining how it fits into their bigger argument. However, it’s best if you play it safe and if it’s a book or larger work, I recommend reading the introduction or first chapter, the chapter(s) pertinent to your research, and the concluding chapter of the work. Introductions and conclusions tend to be shorter sections and normally are super informative and provide context for the other chapters. If a writer knows what they are doing, the reader feels like an expert after reading (what I call) a “book sandwich.”
Intro = bottom bread
+
Random chapter or chapters in between = filling and condiments of your choice
+
Conclusion = top bread
🥪👍🏼
2. YOU ARE ENTITLED TO AN OPINION:
I am just going to generalize and guess that many of us do not read academic texts just because we want to. I sometimes do it for fun, but that is just sometimes. Normally I have a deeper/more compelling reason: assigned reading for class or reading that could be helpful for a research paper. Whatever the case may be, I find that it is always more interesting for me to read academic papers when I am being critical of what I am reading. No author or scholar is objectively perfect, and it follows that their arguments, style, methodology, or framework are also not objectively perfect. You can have a different approach to or opinion about their topic.
It’s one thing to read an article for the simple purpose of absorbing information to summarize later, but it is another thing to read about it in order to formulate an opinion, positive or negative.
Any seminar style class will most likely have you read articles so that you discuss them in class. Trust me, it is WAY better to come to class with an opinion and with questions than just having sort of read the article to get the “gist.”
3. THE MORE YOU READ, THE MORE YOU WRITE:
To produce academic papers, you must read academic papers. Building off of my previous point, because your opinion matters, you also have the opportunity to enter academic discussions through your own writing, but you can only do it if you are actively reading and formulating opinions about the texts you encounter. When you read, I think it is super important to ask yourself:
Who is writing?
What are their biases?
What message are they trying to explicitly convey?
What message are they implicitly conveying?
I am a big fan of a lot of white, male authors, however, when I am learning about intersectional and diverse approaches to history, I think it’s important to read content produced by authors with an intersectional and diverse lived experience.
Most (if not all) of the content you consume, is coming at you with an agenda. You have to be ready to interact with & interpret the content you consume.
It is a gift to be able to read and interpret text for yourself. It used to be the case that only the religious elite had the right to learn to read, and it was they who would interpret knowledge for others.
Surely society has evolved since then, however, if we slack off and fail to do the work necessary to interpret text and question knowledge,
we could just as easily find ourselves in a position our ancestors were in; only knowing what others allow you to. Being limited to someone else’s understanding.
The world we live in depends on innovation, and education spurs innovation. Every academic discipline matters, not just the natural or social sciences. I wish I would have known earlier on that my opinion and my questioning of knowledge could spur innovation, no matter how small.
And so can yours. It’s simply a matter of effort and motivation.