Greg Robertson

For me having to read my textbooks or even read a news article is painful. What ever I am reading needs to be interesting to me like snowboarding or sports. Ultimately, my goal in life is to be an entrepreneur and hopefully own a Gym. If and when I own a Gym the reading I would do mainly, would consist of general business things. Reading would be Letters, bills, and emails. Through college my goals are to maintain being focused on school work, keep my grades the best to my abilities, and teach myself to get the most out of the time I spend reading. I found this out later than I should of but my reading secret formula is #1 Remove Distractions + #4 Take Notes + #6 Set Aside Time to Read = I got more out of reading.

One of the defining moments that made me realize I needed to step my reading up is when I got my mid-term back for me Econ class. It was horrible. I thought I had studied enough; clearly I was not very prepared. The week before I took the exam I thought to myself “I don’t need to re-read in the book what is in my notes” I studied my notes without even opening the book to see what I was learning. Needless to say I should have at least skimmed the chapters and took more notes. After that wakeup call I shortly re-visited my notes along with my text book and cleared up what I thought I understood.

The more I read and took notes the more I learned. Rather than just looking at notes I went into further detail. I made a bunch of flashcards and began to highlight what were important, definitions, formulas, all in different colors. For me to learn Econ I just needed to figure out what worked the best for me to take in and store the information. When I got better at understanding econ it motivated me to try and do better in the class instead of be lazy and wish I never took Econ. My grade increased a little here and there because I started doing better on quizzes.

I honestly still think I shouldn’t have taken econ right away my first semester, but it’s ok. I learned skills because of that class that can now help me in the future. For the classes now and classes to come my reading secrets really aren’t secrets anymore, they are my tools for successful reading.