I have been collecting eBooks since last couple years say since 2003. One thing i never realized about during early days of my life that I am not going to spend much time reading them all. Things have changed a lot during last few years. especially with the popularity of smart phone and handy computing devices.
I spent much of my time collecting eBooks, conducted a lot if search to make collection copied them to cds, dvds, and portable hard drives and kept them soo dear to me. On the same time, when I look into the use of them now, I seriously don’t see that i used them much in years. If i take the ratio of the time that i spent on collecting them, i feel it was just like a hobby of collecting postal stamps.
I always had issues related to using eBooks. I would share them but on the same time I have friends and know people with totally opposite attitude towards it. Though totally depends on person to person, most of the average students suffer with them in context of exam preparation as I do. These are following problems with eBooks when it comes to exam preparation with them.
Source Of Distraction
I am so easy to be distracted by nature and always move over to net or other thing during learning from eBooks. If I don’t have internet connection I go and play music and do some search in computer hard disk. eventually I get distracted and out of an hour I can concentrate only less than half of its time.
Highlighting And Short Notes
While preparing for exams I am used to make short notes and highlight important stuff in books. Write few points in book itself so that I can grasp whole chapter in few words, mark most important formulas, so that i can refer them during revision and just before going to exam. There is no good PDF reader that does this efficiently for me as much as hard paper book.
Carrying Preparation Notes
As i make a preparation notes while preparing for any exam in books, I would like to carry that book to library or to friends where I decide to go and prepare with concentration. Soft copies usually make it difficult to be carried and opened in different places. The technology has grown big with the advent of tabs and cloud but in India we still don’t have easy and comfortable access for these technologies. This makes it almost impossible for us to totally relay on the technology and advancements. Not all students’ have these facilities and we also have battery charging issues with existing devices. I hope this will change in couple of years with technology reaching common man.
Preparing for competitive exams is different from reading a novel, news, or some self help book for pleasure. Exam preparation needs a high level of dedication and effort that makes eBooks not so friendly for the purpose. I read a lot on my phone and share with friends. You cannot imagine even i read Quran and other religious text on phone, almost everything i read these days is on my hand held computing device. I am really not against using soft copies. On the same time, when I learn a new technology and make use of it and try experiments i use hard copies and also make use of papers to make initial notes.
With this I would like to ask you to not to run after trend of collecting eBooks. Just be smart and try to avoid distractions, make a print of soft copy or few important chapters of it, if you don’t have money to buy the book or take a whole book print.
Don’t waste your time being distracted and searching for something that you don’t use much later on. Time is super fast so just choose your study material smartly and be sure how you are making best use of your resources. Don’t risk your future for your distractions.
Wish you all a great luck ahead.