Difficult Reading:

Some of the readings in the class will be quite different than anything you have read before.  Do not fret!!  I am here to help.  A part of this class is to get you working at a level higher than you yourself might think you can operate at.  This is ok.  This is good--this is what college, learning, and growth in one's ability to think means.

But for youto get to this next level you will need to keep a few things in mind and to utilize a few strategies that i will lay out here for you.

1.  Keep a dictionary next to you at all times while reading.  These writers use difficult, specialized words that they use when they speak with their community of theorist and thinkers.  Many of them blur genre boundaries and try on purpose to get your thinking in other ways and directions.  The key is to read and stop whenever you run across a word that you do not understand.  Look it up and then put that meaning into the sentence that you are reading.  Think of it as a technical manual for when you are working on a car:  all cars have similar parts,just lik sentences and paragraphs.  But each car has their own little quirks and might have different locations for common parts.  YOu just have to find it in the manual and correspond it to where it is in the engine. Same with using the dictionary to get words you don't know.

2.  Many of these writers also bring in many different specialties and disciplines when writing--they synthesize and they tyr to show the deep connections (or lack of) between areas and human endeavors that seem so far a part.  That is why you will get these writers pulling ideas and occurrences from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, systems theory, literature, religion, science--they are literally all over the place.  but this is essential for them to show how boundaries are not as important as we think...which is a good thing!!

3.  READ SLOWLY!!  READ CAREFULLY!! TAKE NOTES!!  You might even find that building an outline or a structure ofthe ideas or the argument is better for you to understand the text--good.  Do whatever you need to do to understand the text.  These writers spent a long time sitting, thinking, interacting with their topics before they got what you see in front of you. This means also, actually demands, that you take your time to read these pieces.  Paragraph at a time, even sentence at a time as they are all packed in together very tightly.  It might take you a half hour to read one paragraph.  Good.  Again, this is what you future college professors will expect, so you might as well start now in preparation.

4.  Of course, you can always without hesitation ask me to go over the readings with you...i am happy to do and i will enjoy the experience of helping you grow in your ability to understand difficult ideas.  Besides, this is what i do anyway.  Get in touch with me and i can help!!

Good  luck.