How to Take Notes like a Literature PhD | from Commonplace Book to Encyclopedia

As a PhD candidate in English literature, I understood notetaking to be an essential part of my work. I read from hundreds of books a year, not just to keep up with recent publications in academic fields, but also to learn as much as I could about the development of English literature as a generalist. Even now that I've graduated and continue to teach, note-taking is still a huge part of my reading process. So, in this video, I'm going to show you the method that I developed when studying for my generals and fields oral exams at Harvard.

This is a method for taking and organizing your reading notes into your own personal encyclopedia. Not necessarily a commonplace book. It's something more than just a commonplace book. It's a reference system that works for any subject in the humanities.

So, whether you're studying English literature, history, philosophy, or theology, I think it's a method that would work for any self-arner. And most importantly, I think it's going to help you become a better reader. One who doesn't just read and forget, but one who reads and remembers. And if you study literature, you need familiarity with both the original works of literature, like the novels, the poems, the plays, and their place within literary history.

And that's what this method is going to help you to do. Again, I don't use a commonplace book, and I don't use note cards anymore. I know some people love these methods, but for an academic who needs quick reference is just not sustainable. It's too difficult.

Retrieving specific notes in a giant stack of journals or a a pack of cards. So instead, I wrote my own personal encyclopedia with three parts. The encyclopedia contains first a timeline uh entries organized by authors and entries organized by topic. And all of this begins with annotating while reading.

So before I show you the whole encyclopedia, let's first talk about reading. The first rule is to read without putting the book down. What Samuel Johnson said about reading footnotes goes for writing notes. He said, "When you're reading and the imagination is in flight, don't stoop to read a footnote.

Go back to the footnote afterward. Let the imagination continue to soar unimpeded. So read for as long as you can without stopping. This will strengthen your attention and loosen your dependency upon ...