Hellooooo 2020s, welcome to college! Is it everything you dreamed and more? Maybe it was… until you got your first reading assignment. If you’re starting to sweat, it’s all okay. Let that fear fuel you for the first couple of assignments. You’ll be a pro in no time!

If you choose your classes right, you’ll have have reading assignments that you actually enjoy, but many will feel like more of a chore. Luckily, smart reading strategies can make your whole life easier - a rough draft for any paper starts the moment you start your first read through. The number one take away from college reading and writing I can offer is this: YOUR opinion is more important than the author’s! So clear your mind, grab a pen, and take a look at some of my tried and true note taking strategies to make reading, and later paper writing, a little easier.

(Disclaimer: These strategies are not prescriptive. I’ve developed them over a handful of years, and I often highlight and notate as it strikes me in the moment. As long as I’m making some sense out of a pile of text, I feel good about it!)

In the text:

For lists or a sequential order, I underline or highlight the idea and assign numbers, usually writing over the text. Paragraphs corresponding to the idea will be labeled with the appropriate number as they come up. This works really well for helping me breaking down complicated arguments into their components, and checking that I have an understanding of the full picture.

Circling words I don’t know the meaning of is more of an acknowledgement than a meaningful call to action. I rarely look back at my notes, and so don’t always look up the definitions, but it does help me to remember when a word keeps popping up. That’s when I take the time to google it and commit it to memory. Otherwise, I rely on context clues to get by in a skimming situation.

I underline terms; highlight definitions.

“Quotations” are for buzzwords that I want to be sure to use in my paper, anything that will show that I have a good understanding of the topic, or a term coined by the author that I think deserves special attention.

It took me years before I was willing to violate the sanctity of the text. I’m a very spatial learner, and there are a lot of ways that my notes could have helped me if I had felt better about drawing in my books. Incorporating some of these things has made for better retention and faster reading. I’ll draw a line or a simple arrow through the body of a text to indicate how a series of ideas relate to each other.

Grab a sharpie or other marker and cross out the things that aren’t that important. Here’s what that above text looks like when you do that:

It took me years before I was willing to violate the sanctity of the text. I’m a very spatial learner, and there are a lot of ways that my notes could have helped me if I had felt better about drawing in my books. Incorporating some of these things has made for better retention and faster reading. I’ll draw a line or a simple arrow through the body of a text to indicate how a series of ideas relate to each other.

Reviewing notes has never been faster! I recommend this particularly for a second read through or quiz review as it condenses your reading into its most essential components. If you use this on the first reading of a text, you might end up crossing things out that you later wish you could go back and reread more closely.

In the margins:

An X in the margin means i disagree with what the author is saying. I also started using x before an important term to indicate the phrase “no” or “not.” It’s a quick notation that helps orient me in a pinch.

A check means that this resonates with my personal experience, or a reading that I have encountered in the past! It’s a notational nod that I’m with the argument.

? Question marks pop up when I the author leaves me behind and i'm confused about the argument. If I have a more specific question, I’ll just jot that in the margins.

NO. this usually a way of indicating I was upset by a passage, or when I think the author is being idiotic. It’s nice to track your responses so that when you need to write a paper, you know where to build your argument. My best papers either come from a strong NO response or from a heart response.

LOL/ew these are all simple responses that I can come back to when I need to get back into the mindset I was in when i first read. They might not be really helpful, but I like to have my opinion in ink. You’ll see a lot of “lol, no” scribbled in the margin of text I disagree with.

! This is my wow notation! It could also be used by someone to signify importance, but usually it’s a way for acknowledging that something is interesting to me but maybe not relevant. Because learning is fun and it’s alright to be wowed by your homework from time to time.

<3 These happen rarely, but when an author has taken an argument to a place that really resonates with me, I hit ‘em with a heart. This is often reserved for inspiring quotes, moments of clarity, and things that restore my faith in humanity.