dragonbook

34 Notice what Descartes does for you right at the beginning of his essay, telling you exactly where he is going with the whole thing.  Question It’s often very helpful to formulate for yourself a series of questions before you approach the reading. Notice that I usually do this for you, giving you a series of study questions for each assignment. Formulating a question helps you focus and helps make sure you get out of the reading what you are supposed to.  Read selectively Most students have a natural tendency to just start at the beginning of an assignment and read straight through to the end. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy has to approach a magic book in this way—the Duffers having no idea that there is any other way to approach a book. Don’t be a Duffer! It’s not cheating to skip portions of an assignment. Learn to pick out what you really need. Sometimes, it won’t be all that much! There are times when there really isn’t any purpose in doing much more than skimming. There are times when the author’s contributions to the great conversation aren’t very useful to you. I don’t bother much with Spinoza, for instance. He’s making assumptions I’m pretty much sure are invalid, I know why he’s making those assumptions already, and there’s not much point in my spending a lot of time here. Unfortunately for you, with much of what you look at, you’re not yet able to really judge what will be useful to you and what will not. What are now some of my very favorite works caused me problems at first—particularly Greek drama. Be very careful at this point not to dismiss great works too quickly. Better to act on the assumption that there’s probably something really great there that you’re not quite seeing yet! If a professor is any good, however, you’ll