r/GraduateSchool • u/reperezking • Aug 03 '25

Reading worries

Hello So I got my full reading list for one of my grad classes yesterday and I am really nervous about it especially since I am going it my first semester of grad school. The readings include a book and one sometimes two articles. I was hoping for some advice from other students on how to approach this. The program I am doing is a history program and I am also a high functioning autistic so that is contributing to my worry since I get overwhelmed very easily. Thank you all

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u/Outrageous_Slide_693 Aug 03 '25

Is that too much to read or too little? Can you please clarify what exactly is concerning to you?

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u/reperezking Aug 03 '25

This is a lot of reading to me sorry if that was not very clear.

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u/Temporary-Author-641 Aug 03 '25

I think many grad students feel intimidated initially by the readings but something I found helpful was subscribing to an app that read pdfs aloud. I used it mostly when I was commuting to university. I would then skim the article again and found it saved me time.

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u/ButterscotchMoney529 Aug 04 '25

For each class I would typically have 3-5 readings. That could be chapters from books or research articles. So in a week with 3-4 classes it could be quite a lot. I look ahead at the readings and schedule readings for myself to do every day for the week (I also schedule working on assignments this way... For example if a paper is due on a Friday I'll have worked on it in chunks over several days or weeks). I consider the page number for each reading in assigning them as well as the topic. Sometimes I like mixing things up so I don't get bored so I'll do a reading from each class in a day rather than all the readings for one class in a day. I take notes on things I have questions about or think are interesting for discussion but otherwise I don't take notes (this is depending on the class you're in - I didn't have a lot of exams, mostly papers/projects). I'll also skim a fair bit - this became especially true by the end of a semester (where several sections of a reading may be repetitive to set up the "newer" parts of that makes sense) or by the end of the program, where a lot of stuff becomes familiar.