Do I HAVE to Read the Textbook

all right your professor assigned you chapter of reading but you know there's no quiz and they're just going to lecture on it anyway so do you actually have to do the reading yes yes yes yes yes yes what do you think was gonna say i'm professor in this video i'll explain to you why professors assign reading even though we know you're not really gonna do it why it's not gonna take nearly as long as you think it will and how small but dramatic change in your mindset will motivate you to actually change your behavior and start doing this i'm dr bernard your engineering professor if this is your first time here this channel is all about helping you earn your college degree the best way to do that is take responsibility for your own education because nobody has as much to gain from it as you do example problems for specific classes and videos like this that are general college tips i'll start with the short reason to do the assigned readings but first quick story tell me if this sounds anything like you your professor assigns reading assignment but you don't do it you go to class and the professor lectures on the reading since nobody in the class has done the reading the professor starts all the way at the beginning and has to work really fast all the way through the whole course into the very advanced stuff as well you have no idea what's going on in class but you copy everything down and hope that you can learn it later from your notes you try to work on the homework problems and your notes are kind of useless they're probably filled with some typos and you still don't understand it very well so you kind of sort of have to copy off of your friends maybe you go online and copy off of chegg or some other website come time for the test you don't know it very well still so you have to stay up all night cramming and by some miracle on the test you happen to pull or but you have no idea how you don't feel like you've learned anything and come final exam time you have to learn everything all over again as soon as course is done you basically have forgotten it all already so how did do let me know down in the comments if you feel like this story described your experience in chemistry or calculus or statics so the short easy answers to why you do the reading is to prevent that story from being you you do the reading so that when you go to class you can actually understand what's going on and then when you do the homework you've actually learned something along the way and you can contribute you'll still probably work with some people to do the homework it's still not going to be easy but you can at least contribute and you understand some of it then when come time for the test you actually learn something during the homework and you don't have to stay up all night studying you can actually get some sleep and go into your test refreshed maybe actually pull an or this time instead of or and then by the time you finish the class you actually remember some of it when you get to your next class because most engineering courses are prerequisites for course that's going to come afterwards all right so that's the dream that's the short easy explanation is that we want you to actually do the reading so that you can actually learn everything else but what's that you say you don't have time to do the reading and so i'm here to tell you you do have the time as long as you read the right way the common mistake for textbooks is that students try to read them like novels and that is wrong you should not be reading textbook sequentially it's not story right you're not worried about spoilers you don't need to build suspense you want to read textbook in order of importance that means you want to skip around and hunt and find the most important information to read first and what this means is that you don't have to read all the way through you can do one minute of reading or 10 minutes of reading or an hour of reading as long as you're reading from most important to least important you can stop any time you want and you'll have gotten the most important information right the longer you keep reading there's actually going to be diminishing returns and that the more and more you read you're reading less and less important information each time so here's how would recommend you read an engineering textbook pass number one should only take you about one minute and is just to determine the scope of the assignment you're just going to turn every page just as fast as you can turn them and all you're trying to do is read the section titles you just want to get general idea of how much information is in this reading assignment and generally on what vague topic it's going to be anybody can do this you can even do this when you get to class as you sit down and you have minute or two before class starts flip through and look at every single page and just get general idea of what's in there so pass number two is going to be terminology this is where now you're gonna look through but you're gonna spend about five minutes this time and now you're gonna look for bold and italicized keywords and you're just gonna learn all of the new terminology that you haven't seen before you'll also look at equations and make sure you know what all the variables in each equation means if there's beta or gamma or an look up and find what each of those variables stand for so with just these first two passes six minutes of time you'll have an idea of what the lecture is going to be about and you'll know all the keywords and you'll know what all the variables in the equations mean so when your professor starts talking you won't be hearing words for the first time if you have five more minutes to devote to reading past number three is going to be figures go back through again and this time stop and look at all the pictures and read all of the captions some of these are going to be photographs that show you how this topic is used in the real world some of these will be charts that you'll have to use later on you know to look up numbers in some of these will be infographics or block diagrams that help explain how something is used or what it's for so the next thing would read in your textbook pass number four is going to be example problems actually go through and see how each of those equations are used see what types of problems are going to be in this section and in particular you want to compare and contrast different example problems so try not to spend too much time on any individual problem actually compare them to each other so you can see why one equation was used for one problem and different equation was used for the other problem and see if you can tell the difference as to why those two problems were different why different equation had to be used or why they were solved in different way then if you have even more time then would go through and actually start skimming textbooks are really dense and your mind will start to wander it's going to be hard to focus to actually read it as if it were story so try to read try to force yourself to read quickly and your purpose during this last skim is just to make sure you didn't miss any important context like this equation can only be used in some particular circumstance that's what you're trying to find when you go through and do the reading so don't read it as if it's story read it as if you're trying to hunt for all the little hidden tips and tricks as to how to use each of these equations when they apply that sort of thing right you're looking for important pieces of information you can use you're not trying to be entertained by the story it's going to be the most boring story ever if haven't convinced you yet why you need to do the reading here's my last go at it this is small but dramatic mindset change that might make huge difference you aren't in college to be taught you are in college to learn you can't just sit in college and let the professor fill up your brain with all the knowledge you need to learn learning is an active process and it's on you it's your responsibility to learn and no one will care as much about you learning than yourself it makes sense for you to take charge of your own education for regular 15-week course you have about 10 hours per week to dedicate to each course and how you budget those 10 hours is going to determine how much information you learn how many all-night cram sessions you're going to make and how well prepared you are for your follow-on courses that have this one as pre-req so if that story told at the beginning of this chapter is you where you kind of sit through class and don't understand anything and then try to learn it all after class that's this chart right you have three hours that's wasted at the beginning that's not learning in class and then seven hours afterwards of scrambling to try to pick up all the material on your own if you can change your mindset to instead of being i'm going to wait and let my professor try to teach this to me which you already know doesn't work if you can change this into what do need to do in order to learn the material then you have an opportunity to drastically shift how your 10 hours are spent so what should you do how can you best optimize those 10 hours to learn everything in that course for that week and the answer is you need to prepare for class because sitting and writing down everything that's on the board in class is just not going to be enough just transferring my notes from my notes to your notes is not the best use of your time that's not the best use of your 10 hours the way you use me the way you use your professor is for the hard stuff that's going to be how to apply the harder equations in the chapter or how to combine two different topics into one problem that sort of synthesis is hard for you to do on your own the first time and so that's why you want someone with expertise to show you how all right so let's put up new pie chart as to how you can spend your time better hour one doing the reading this is learning the terminology looking at all the figures looking at some example problems right this is the easy stuff the most important stuff in the book reading hour two start your homework if you start your homework problems before class then in class you'll actually recognize things that the professor is talking about like need that for that second homework problem and that's going to save you time later now during this one hour don't solve any problems lot of times students once you you look at problem it's like can do this one and you want to knock out the whole problem right away hold yourself back start every problem before you finish any of them in fact if you know that you know how to solve it that's great but still move on to the next problem your goal before you go to class for the week should be to have started every problem so that you know what to look for in class and so you know what questions to ask in class so if your professor isn't covering something that you already know is on the homework you'll be able to ask about it that's probably whole separate video in itself how to ask better questions in class but one of those steps is going to be to have already looked at the homework so that you know what you don't know and what you need to know what you need to get out of class so once you've used those two hours of prep time your next three hours are going to be in class and they're actually going to be valuable now because you've already seen the homework problems you know what to listen for and you've already read all of the keywords so you understand what the professor is saying and you've looked at some of the example problems so you can compare them to the example problems your professor is doing and then with those final five hours you can finish the homework and do any extra studying that you need to do to get ready for the test so from your 10 hour budget you used to have seven hours after class now you only have five but with this new model you'll have learned so much more with those first five hours you'll get more done with those last five than you ever would have gotten done with those seven hours before you spend two hours prepping for class you spend three hours in class with the goal of one confirming that what you learned from the reading is correct and two identifying any gaps in your knowledge that you didn't pick up from the reading and three making sure that all of the questions you have about the homework problems get answered so that you'll be way more efficient and be able to solve the homework in reasonable amount of time after class is out and this is how you take charge of your learning instead of relying on only being taught this is how you make use of all ten hours per week instead of wasting three hours and trying to scramble with only seven and not getting very much done and so that is why you have to do the reading okay rant over if you think this has helped you become better college student please like this video and consider subscribing to my channel so you can see each new video make as they come out youtube might even be recommending on screen right now couple other videos i've made that it thinks you might want to watch who knows give them try they might be pretty awesome thanks again for watching and enjoy the rest of your day