Grad Student Studying for Exams

by alexisvwarnock

Hello,

I am a 3rd year grad student who is taking her first exam in fall. I am feeling overwhelmed with the amount of information I need to obtain from the 45 books and articles I have to read. I am just looking for any helpful tips from other historians or students on best practices for organizing massive amounts of information so when I take my exam I'm not flipping back through 45 sources trying to find something. Thanks friends!

Kugelfang52

First, you can do this! Exams are pressure filled, but absolutely survivable.

As to advice, here are a few things that helped me.

Have a system of note taking that includes the following (include page number found for as much as possible):

  • Thesis
  • Major source type
  • Strengths (an example)
  • Weaknesses (an example)
  • Lineage/place in historiography (works building on and disagreeing with)
  • Thematic cluster (US slavery, environmental, memory studies, etc)
  • Relation to other works in cluster

Remember that you are reading to find these things. You are getting to the “meat” of books to see how they prove what they say in their thesis, not to memorize all the small “facts.”