In my four years of grad school, I have now put more than 500 reference papers into my reference manager program. I have read over 500 papers (mostly, with a couple of books in there) about research that is relevant to my research. I have a rule that I have to read them before I put them into the program, so I really have read them all. I also have a pile of paper about a foot tall sitting on my desk to read.
I also have more references that I have to put in manually because I can not find them to import the information.
It really does not end up sounding like so much if you figure that is about 125 per year of grad school. It feels like a lot though. I also have at least one year of grad school left and a dissertation to finish writing.
How many of these papers could I voluntarily recall? 10? Maybe 20? :-)
7 comments:
I've always heard that it's not that you can remember all the facts about the things you've studied, but know enough to know where to look to find the facts you need when you need them.
It'll be really fun for you to purge and burn (or recycle) a lot of those in a year! :)
Oh, but Carolyn, what you don't realize is that those papers feel like an unbilical cord to knowledge that you just can't cut. Not to mention that there _are_ actually times in the future when you need to refer back to them. Of course, when that happens, you usually just look up the electronic version. But still.
I like your comment, Ron. It makes me feel better for having forgotten things.
Ron, good point. I'll have to know a bunch for real when I defend my dissertation though.
Carolyn, did you have a massive bonfire or keep them all?
Danielle, did you move all your references with you? ;-)
Well, I didn't burn them, but I definitely purged a great deal - some of which I had in pdf form but didn't use enough to warrant moving with me, and some of which were just for classes and I will probably never need again (and can always get in pdf form when I do). Was a little therapeutic.
I still haven't thrown any away. In actually have gone back to them a number of times to look things up.... but I didn't take them with me to the office. Home is enough.
Only at exam time do you remember ALL of them at once.
Post a Comment