Over the course of the last year as I have been thinking of starting Seminary, I decided that I was going to increase the veracity of my reading. Last year, I read about eighty books. This year I set a goal to read one hundred and twenty. Some of these were academic, some a bit fluffier and over a broad variety of genres. Honestly, my goal was to learn to read a bit faster and comprehend a bit more. Also, Minnesota winters can be long and facilitate reading.<\/p>\n
On December 31st<\/sup>, I hit my goal. Sitting next to you all in Oxford I became a bit dismayed though. Dr. Clark told me {us} that I was reading at a simple elementary level and there were three more levels of reading to learn to begin reading at a doctoral level. I felt defeated before Seminary was really beginning. Though it was as if a door was slammed shut and I felt I could not progress to a higher level, I decided to open the door and look through the doorway into a whole new world of learning. I tried inspectional reading with a few leadership books that had been collecting dust on my shelf. I set a timer for an hour and decided to ingest as much information as I could in that time and move on. After a couple of books, I have learned to be okay with not reading a book cover to cover.<\/p>\n Entering a new doorway and finding myself along a new learning pathway I was still a bit in the dark about what to do with all the information. I had a hard time remembering what I read a week ago, much less a few months ago. Then came Zettlekasten and Obsidian. Like a lamppost along the path, this idea of taking structured and organized notes has illuminated a way forward for me in this program. I began taking notes on each book I read and learning how to link notes and hashtag words. Like one of our colleagues, the idea of taking notes almost seems exciting now. Ahrens writes, “The ability to spot patterns, to question the frames used to detect the distinctions made by others, is the precondition to thinking critically and looking behind the assertions of a text or a talk” (Ahrens 2022, 82).<\/p>\n I realized that taking notes could tie together many of the books that I have read over the last couple years. So, I took to task and book by book I have established a note for each book I have read over the last two years. {As I said, Minnesota winters can be long}. I can see that note taking is itself the work of learning, assorting, and writing. I realize I still have a long way to go regarding comprehension of so much material. Yet, the lamppost that is Zettlekasten has illuminated what once was a dark and scary path.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n Ahrens, S\u00f6nke. 2022. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking<\/em>. 2nd edition, Revised and Expanded edition. Hamburg, Germany: S\u00f6nke Ahrens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the course of the last year as I have been thinking of starting Seminary, I decided that I was going to increase the veracity of my reading. Last year, I read about eighty books. This year I set a goal to read one hundred and twenty. Some of these were academic, some a bit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34728,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34727\/revisions\/34728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}