I remember watching films in which the main character, in a flash of inspiration, writes a literary masterpiece or reads all the resources on a given topic in a very short time, usually overnight. I don’t know why, but throughout my early studies I thought this method was a worthy practice. I think some people call this procrastination. This rarely went well for me. Fortunately, with experience, education, and mentorship, I have almost completely abandoned this illusion. However, there is still plenty of room for growth in my reading, writing and note-taking practices.<\/p>\n
The first practice that I would like to strengthen is reading to understand rather than to gain information.<\/strong> The big picture questions remain the hardest for me to answer. I find that by default, I am a collector of facts. I enjoy finding important words, sentences, and studying context, but often avoid questions that require more disciplined thought. Collecting facts may be helpful in a game of trivia, but it is quite unhelpful when a professor asks, \u201cElysse. What is this book about?\u201d \u201cWhat is the author\u2019s purpose?\u201d Many times, I have felt the room wince in discomfort as I tried to piece together some kind of unsatisfactory response.<\/p>\n Second, I want to progress through reading as an active participant in the conversation with the author. <\/strong>I like the idea of the \u201cmeeting of the minds\u201d between author and the reader. I generally start each piece of literature with the best intention to keep my mind awake. However, if I am not careful, I can easily slip into passive reader mode. I cross my fingers in the hope that I can retain everything presented to me. It does not work. Additionally, I now recognize that remaining in passive reader mode makes it extremely difficult to \u201cfind my voice\u201d when reviewing literature, writing essays, and taking notes. Perhaps I naively consider literature as this absolute that should not be questioned, because I am not the expert. It empowers me to know that as a reader, I can share a voice in the conversation.<\/p>\n Lastly, I would like to develop more effective note taking skills. <\/strong>I had to laugh when Adler and Van Doren wrote about readers who recite quotes without understanding their meaning. In the pages and pages of my notes are many good quotes that I would struggle to explain. I am also the person who has notes in a different notebook for each subject and each year. However, the notes are not arranged with much thought. I recently looked through a notebook with lots of interesting notes, but it lacked organization. I thought, \u201cWow! It would be great if they were listed in some order for easy reference.\u201d<\/p>\n These are the major areas in which I wish to develop throughout my doctoral training. It will take stepping out of my comfort zone to reach these higher levels of understanding and enlightenment, but I am ready to dive into this new world of inspectional reading and Zettelkasten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember watching films in which the main character, in a flash of inspiration, writes a literary masterpiece or reads all the resources on a given topic in a very short time, usually overnight. I don’t know why, but throughout my early studies I thought this method was a worthy practice. I think some people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"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-34801","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\/34801","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\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34804,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34801\/revisions\/34804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}