Hack College

aka, How to survive and look good in college

There’s too much reading to do, too much fun to be had, and not enough time; welcome to college. Here are some concrete steps to reading that can help you get through everything and actually get something out of everything on the syllabus that was assigned. For another take on this issue, go to this site: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/reading.html, (with examples taken from a reading of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities).

1. Understand the structure of prose. Books and articles in English tend to be structured in particular ways, which are largely extensions of the “5 paragraph essay.” In an article, the introduction section is key, as is the conclusion. There usually is a “literature review” section – this can be skimmed, especially as you get deeper into a syllabus since the course is probably structured around the topic that is being reviewed. In social science and science articles, this is the section with a lot of in-text citations – i.e., (Lozada 2006; Pan 2011; c.f. Gillette 2010). If you are new to the topic, then this part needs to be read more slowly. The bulk of any article is then methodology, data, and analysis. The first paragraph (other than the cute hook into the reading) is the most important part of the article, and the first sentence is usually the most important part of the paragraph. So pay attention to these firsts. Caveat: sometimes the last part is the most important, depending upon the style of the author; read that as well.

2. Read the title and headings. If you can explain the title of the article and how the author reached the conclusion, then that’s pretty good. Each section may have a heading as well, so also be ready to explain that.

3. Skip words or concepts that you don’t understand for later. Obfuscation is an academic strategy to demonstrate smartness. So if a particular word or concept is used that you don’t understand, and it is only used once or a few times, then it’s probably not important. If it is repeated throughout the article, try to see if you can figure it out through context. If that still doesn’t work, then write down the word/concept, and ask about it in class. Here is a ready-made way to participate in class and show that you at least knew what was assigned for the day.

4. Don’t highlight – take notes. Instead of covering a page in yellow, write (or preferably, type) out particular concepts and quotes, including page numbers. Lists of arguments are good – look for them in the flow of arguments. Look for changes in voice – the whole paragraph may be in third-person, and then there’s a switch to first person. This is usually something important (which is why the shift in voice). Words like “I assert,” “I define,” etc. should be red flags that this is a sentence that should actually be read (instead of skimmed).

5. Set a time limit to finish you readings. If there are 6 articles that need to be read by the end of the week, set aside at least one hour (but not more than two hours) to read 2 articles. So if it’s a Monday seminar, start you reading on Tuesday, and have three days (i.e., Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) to finish the readings. Don’t do it straight through, though – your productivity will decline, and you’ll never get through it. Take breaks to help you re-focus – read for half an hour, do language for one hour, and read for another half hour.

6. Look for patterns in the readings. There’s got to be a reason why readings are lumped together for one class period, and there’s also a reason why readings are sequenced the way they are throughout the term. See if you can figure out, like Elmo does, why these things are grouped together. Are the supplementary or complimentary? Is there a title in the syllabus for that day?

7. Read with an agenda. Mine your readings to fit your interests and goals. In a class on “Contemporary Chinese Society and Culture,” for example, your interest broadly speaking may be on gender, with a specific interest in domestic/family issues. So approach each reading with the question – how does this help me understand gender? If the reading is specifically on Chinese railroads, for example, see if you can see power dynamics or other issues that say something about your own interests; if not, then why not? But one constant agenda that you should have is to figure out why the professor assigned the reading. Is it a seminal piece that everyone cites? Is it a counter-point to another article? Is it a review of a particular topic? Is it perhaps another approach to understanding Chinese modernity?

8. Reflect while reading. Do you find yourself nodding your head as you skim through the reading? Or are you getting increasingly irritated as you plod through the article? Assuming that there is nothing in your immediate social context that is troubling you or making you happy, there must be something in the reading that is either confirming something you have a sense of or making you angry. Write down a particular quote that is irritating you or making you happy. Bring that to class, and here you have another “class participation” starting point. Your reaction may also be the reason why the professor assigned that article.

9. What works for articles, works for books. The same approach works for longer works such as books. Substitute chapter for section, substitute first paragraph for first sentence, and essentially you have the same process.

Try these out and see if this works for you. Email me other tips that you’ve discovered helps you plow through the readings so that I can add them to this list, and assign yet another reading to future classes!

An outline helps you organize a complex project, and is best viewed as a research tool. Unlike the outlines that you may have learned about in high school, the outline is not something you do just before writing. The format that I suggest below is a living document – during the research process, you should keep going back to the outline, filling in the gaps, changing the structure or specific parts, and constantly update the file. I recommend that they be kept on your hard drive in your word processing format. I keep multiple copies of outlines after major revisions – someone who looks at the series of outlines can see changes in my thinking over time.

The outline keeps you organized by keeping you on your focus, pointing out gaps in your collection of data and literature review, and identifying the structure of your argument. It is not just the five elements that you may have learned before (introduction, three sections for the body, conclusion) it has detail that you should go back to every once in a while to see if you are on track.

The first part is a short statement of the paper (something that can easily be converted into an abstract):

1. Title: this is important as a working statement of your research
2. Thesis Statement: the main hypothesis of the research project
3. Assumptions/Research Questions: the underlying theoretical assumptions of specific research questions that will help you test the above hypothesis
4. Structure of Argument: in broad strokes, what are the cases, specific events, or data that you will be using to address your research questions and main hypothesis

The next parts constitute the actual outline of your research paper. For a thesis-length paper, you will have multiple chapters, where each chapter can be seen as a mini-paper in itself. As a result, I suggest that you incorporate the above elements into each chapter outline, but adjusted for the specificity of each section. Chapter outlines should have:

1. Title of the chapter
2. Goal of the chapter (mini-thesis statement for the chapter)
3. Data and Relevant Literature for the chapter
   This is an important part of making your outline a research tool; by identifying specific data that you will be using, you may find that there’s a little more fieldwork (or a little more library research) that you need to do to write this chapter.
4. Structure of the chapter
   Include number of pages for each section – this will help you keep the writing goals in sight.

You can also add relevant quotes (with page numbers – you should also be maintaining a research bibliography as you collect literature) in the outline. The key thing is to put whatever information you feel will help you in the writing of the project. There are programs out there like Microsoft OneNote that can help you keep track of things as well; I use Evernote to manage fieldnotes, various types of data, articles that I’ve collected, and notes that I’ve taken on the literature.

As you move on in the writing process, go back and update your outline so that it reflects the actual structure of the drafts that you have written. This will help you see the overall structure of the argument
that you are making.

Here are examples (an early one and a later one) of outlines from my own work (to my dissertation – compare it, if you’re bored, to my book God Aboveground) to give you an idea of what an outline looks like. Below are some links for further reference.

Developing an Outline (from Purdue University)
Using Outlines (from Indiana University)

The research proposal is an opportunity for you to tell me not only what you plan to research paper but also how you will conduct the research. In the end, writing a proposal helps you stay organized and focused. It consists of at least 5 elements:

1. Title
   Thinking about a title helps you make more concrete the parameters of your research project, and helps to convey your project to the reader.
2. Statement of the Problem (hypothesis or research question, literature review)
   This is one of the main features of the proposal, especially the hypothesis or research question. The subject of your research should be phrased in the form of a strong statement that specifies to the reader what you will examine. For example: “Title IX has shaped conceptions of gender in American society” is OK, but put into a form of a testable hypothesis would be even stronger: “The implementation of Title IX to collegiate sports has redefined American conceptions of femininity.” The difference is in the specificity – college sports narrows the field down, gender has been focused to something that can possibly be measured (conceptions of femininity), etc. For the literature review in the statement of the problem, it is also understood that you have not finished your research – but you should be able to situate your research project in the wider discourse of sports and society issues. You will need to have read some of the sources that you plan to use, but not exhaustively.
3. Methods (how you will answer your research question and support your argument)
   Even if your research is based on library research, every research project has a methodology – the way that the researcher plans to answer the research question. In this section, then, you will spell out that plan – and yes, it is understood that you have not finished the research yet and that things may change. But you should have a sense of how you can measure “conceptions of femininity,” using the example above, in that your data may include pictures of women in magazines, women’s roles in movies, increased availability and variety of exercising equipment or clothing for women, etc.
4. Workplan (timeline)
   this is more of a formality, but should serve as a reminder to you for staying on track, especially if your data gathering includes methods other than library research.
5. Bibliography
   This is another key part of the proposal. This will help you keep track of your different sources, and also shows what work you’ve done so far. Put it in the proper citation format, so that you can save time when you submit the actual paper since you already have most of your bibliography written out already.

The proposal is not something set in stone; think about it as a draft, a work in progress, a thought exercise. The goal of writing the proposal is to give you more focus in the research; it is not to set the focus of your research. Most research plans change for a variety of reasons – not enough data, problems in coordinating fieldwork, the data is telling you something else is more relevant – so don’t worry about it as you write the proposal. Just be specific in both your thesis statement and your methods, and do a good job compiling a bibliography.

Here is a sample thesis proposal for you to examine, to help you make your own.

(Updated, 16 March 2017)
The structure of an abstract is in essence the structure of a paper, and shares with the paper a need for specificity. The difference is that whereas in the paper you have paragraphs to explain your point, in the abstract, you have one or two sentences! Below are the elements necessary for a good abstract:

1. Title: Something that summarizes the point of your paper; try to make it stimulating!
2. Introduction: Statement of the problem, research question
3. Methodology: How you are going to answer the question, including a brief summary of the location/topic.
4. Delineation of the specific problem areas, lines of analysis. Here you can make allusions to the theoretical or ethnographic contextualization, and some of the specific areas that you will deal with to answer the research question.
5. Conclusion: This would include a further elaboration of the problem, or wider implications of the research.

(Note: Catherine Baker has five parts (and a title) that she defines (in order) as: 1) Current state of knowledge in your field; 2) what is wrong in the state of knowledge further; 3) your solution; 4) methodology; 5) resolution.)

Like an executive summary in business, the abstract is designed to essentially summarize the whole presentation. Because of the way academia is structured, the abstracts are often times the first thing that is written, followed by the writing of the paper itself. As a result, there is many times a disjuncture between the abstract and the actual presentation. Don’t get hung-up on this disjuncture – the abstract is in essence an outline, and writing the abstract should help you write the paper. Of course, the actual direction of your paper may force a change in the abstract.

First, make sure you have a good title – like an executive summary, you need to catch your reader/audience with title that both informs and attracts. There are two basic types – the colon type and the single line type. The colon type is the contemporary rage, where the first part is catchy, and can be a translation of an enigmatic local term, or something that obliquely points to the issue, and the second part is the actual explanation of what is being discussed. The single line type is informative, and by itself tries to be flashy in terms of the subject matter being discussed.

Second, in your four parts, be as specific as you can. The paper may not be written yet, but take a chance on writing about what you think you will find, or what your intuition says will be the result. Again, your abstract may change after the paper is written, but asking or stating specific questions and problems will also make you focus in the research process and writing of the paper.

Third, the abstract should be written in the third person – like papers, first-person could be added to make a point (in a paper, when the dominant style is third person, using first person is a good way to highlight or accent your point; the reverse does not hold true). This does not mean writing in the passive voice, nor does it mean not including “colloquialisms” when appropriate.

Here is a sample abstract for you to review, to help you write your own.