1/Welcome to “How to Grad School?” Are you struggling to take notes on graduate level material? Are you reading a real ~ T H I C ~ book? Let me tell you about a strategy to take notes BEFORE you start reading in detail, I call it ‘pre-reading.’

2/What is pre-reading? It is a method of taking notes where you outline what you are about to read BEFORE you read it, by looking for sign-posts the author has left for you. These signpost can be remembered pretty easily with the acronym (you guessed it) THIC. 

3/What does it stand for?
T: Title, Table of Contents, Topic Sentences, Theses
H: Headings, Hypotheses
I: Introduction
C: Conclusion(s) 

4/Yes! Papers, books, journal articles, etc. are generally organized to be understood, and by reverse-engineering their structure we can make effective, concise notes, and maximize the usefulness of reading. 

5/So, if you find your reading time being interrupted to take notes every other paragraph, or if you don’t take notes because it is tedious, but end up forgetting material when you need it … 

6/This method may be for you. And bonus! You can follow along with me as I (a) pre-read a chapter I’ve never opened before, and (b) watch me make a fool of myself.

7/General caveats: I am not an education major/consultant/professional, this is what has worked FOR ME, and I think it will work for other people, too. It is NOT innovative, other people do similar or even the same thing to set up their notes. 

8/I am also NOT a professional content creator, so making slick, polished, and highly engaging videos is going to take some time – hopefully it can be helpful, anyway! 

9/On accessibility: I let YouTube auto-generate captions. These usually work well with my voice. If you open the links and it has not done this, you may need to wait 24 hours. If they do not populate, I will make a blog post with the same information.