Learn to read a mass of papers

Graduate studies are really different from undergrads'.

 

As what my roomie Karl said, "all good colleges as Purdue offer students a lot of assignments, and you can learn much indeed." I agree, but I'm still under the process of getting accomodated to such style of study. To be honest, it kinda disturbed my original plans before I came to US - I thought I could have much spare time after class so that I can learn all the books I took from China to here, which was charged 125$ by NW Air for the excessive weight by them. It is another proof that blind early planning doesn't work...

 

All instructors will assign many materials to us to read as a relative reference to the course. Now I've got a 44-page paper and totally 4 chapters from two books to read, in less than 3 or 4 days! No abandon is permitted. It leads to the first important issue to solve for each graduate at the very beginning of their studies or even academic career : how to read a mass of papers?

 

A proper methodology is necessary. Besides the language problems arising in the first several months for an International student, being clever when reading is very important : not all papers are useful, and not all sentences deserve to cost more cycles of your brain...

 

P.S. We may have much more practice projects in the latter part of the semester. Maybe we could learn how to complete them in short time then :P