I have a high reading rate and a high comprehension rate. In grad school they told us the the profs would each assign reading as if that was your only class it was on purpose. There was literally no way to read everything for classes on top of all the papers and thesis work. For me, can't read everything was about 80-85 percent of the material which was above average.
One of the tricks for articles is read the summary, introductory paragraph, and conclusion and speak early in discussion to show you know what the article is abut.
Another trick is divide articles up with friend(s) and brief each other.
Both in my upper division Medieval History undergraduate classes and in my graduate classes, we'd periodically get assigned the same book for a different class, which was helpful. I could skim my old notes and not reread it or just pick out certain chapters. (Not textbooks, but medieval lit type things. This would happen with classics, philosophy, theology texts, across different under graduate and graduate degrees. It happens).
Usually if I had to skip something important, I'd take notes on the class discussion and it was fine. I was an active class participants, my papers were generally early and heavily well resourced. This can buy you a lot of slack in college when you need it.
One time I got assigned "Little Flowers of St. Francis" and I didn't have time that weekend, so I skipped it. I listened in class, I made good notes. (Paraphrasing things makes them stick in your head the way just reading or listening won't. ChatGP can't stick things in your head the way writing things in your own words will.)
I truly intended to read it, but the back half of semester is busy and I also had two language classes in a full course load and papers and...
I actually used it in an essay question on an exam. Brother Juniper reminded me of the holy Fool archetype from Buddhist writings. I could easily remember a bunch of illustrative stories from class discussion I could use as evidence. I got a perfect score. She could not tell I hadn't read it.
I meant to read it over break, I really did, but there was a bunch of more interesting reading to do and breaks are always too short.
Over the ourse of the last wo under grad years and my medieval Masters program, it was a bout 50/50 it'd get assigned in whole or in part for one class or another, across multiple proffs.
The second time, i didn't even try to read it, but my hand was up in class with relevant comments and opinions. I'd casually reference something in a paper or essay here appropriate. A year went by and then another.
Eventually about a decade after it was first assigned i sold my copy away having never cracked it open.
I am convinced none of the people who assigned this book ever had a clue i hadn't read it.
I am not convinced this was cheating. I knew the information. The information was correct and i was using it correctly with my own spin.
My quality notetaking, my skill at chunking information with other disparate information, my skills at writing essays and papers, all of that was mine from long practice.
LLM stuff slides right through you like olestra. It doesn't give you skills and it's such a passive way to do anything. Active note taking, active thinking, active writing, that builds skills.
gracieabrams
amandla
