Education

[Connolly1916]

Looking for advice re political education, by that I mean everything from theory to general history. I sometimes struggle to focus when reading, and I have a mountain of unread books on a lot of general topics. Just wondering how other members manage to internalise information when reading (I often struggle with the terminology used etc - basically, I'm not particularly well educated)?

[lanadelarosa]

I have pretty severe adhd so this was always super hard for me, as well. It wasn't until I started putting effort into organizing my material, rewriting important parts of the material I was reading because I almost instantly forget everything I read, and just went over the material on a regular basis (I'm rereading the entropy of capitalism right now for the 5th time in the past couple of months). It's the only way I can hold onto the information. What I did was that I read the essentials and branched out from there instead of going from one thing to another, it's hard though because you're not always in the mood to read about the same stuff and so often. However, don't let your inability to retain information easily make you feel inferior or unconfident within the left, even if sometimes it can be filled with elitist academics. Engaging and questioning is one of the best ways to learn instead of just reading dusty books all the time.

[ckaihatsu]

Do a search for 'Cornell notes'.

[SuicidalTrotskyist]

A method i use to help retain information is i simply quote important parts of the literature i'm reading. Its basically the same as taking notes but it saves time. Just save them in a document so you can visit it in the future to refresh your memory.

[Riot]

Try using audiobooks/text-to-speech software, if you haven't tried them already. Listening to something gives voice to the ideas being presented.