I have a hard time with "textbooks." For one, they are expensive to get the latest edition of - the edition the professors are using and tell us to use - but I have a very difficult time just reading them anyway. I skim through them, pouring over the maps, photos, graphs, drawings, paintings, bold/italicised vocabulary words, and "real life examples" if there are any (text books set up like DK books are the best) and I read chunks of of the "text," but I have such a hard time just reading from start to finish (and actually retaining what I've read) unless it's a "story," not a "textbook." Anyway, between that problem and the cost, each semester I:
*pour through the college and the public library catalog systems for videos, articles, audio books (story type - they can be non-fiction, just written more novel style then textbook style) to reserve and check out as many as possible
*also use a lot of online websites with video tutorials, animated maps/graphs, and real life examples of the subjects I'm studying
*read blogs - they're great too especially for the child development classes
*skim through older cheaper editions of the textbooks
*(and more and more professors are including media resources in their classes too)
to hopefully get all the info I need for my classes (I know I get A LOT of extra info, just hopefully I've actually covered everything that will be on the exams)
Anyway, this semester I've studied a lot of good but ... um ... unpleasant stuff, and this morning I had to "step away from it" again for a bit, so I:
*re-looked over my Primary lesson for this afternoon
*checked blogs (always good for improving one's mood and outlook on life)
*watched Stephanie's "My New Life" again (which always helps too - somehow her kids on the counter always helps me - it's so normal, so exactly what kids really do, even while their parents are being filmed - and seeing them all on the climb, and her typing in her gloves, and saying "beauty and motherhood are one," are so touching)
*watched several more
and I feel much better
http://lds.org/pages/his-sacred-name-an-easter-declaration?lang=eng
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?autoplay=true&index=2&locale=0&sourceId=79bacbcc921b7210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=bd163ca6e9aa3210VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?autoplay=true&index=5&locale=0&sourceId=e16bb0333ee92210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=bd163ca6e9aa3210VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD
https://lds.org/youth/video/spiritual-vertigo?lang=eng
http://www.youtube.com/user/MormonMessages#p/search/0/uYrNBpJly9s
https://lds.org/youth/video/daytons-legs?lang=eng
https://beta.lds.org/youth/from-every-nation/article/cheering-each-other-on?locale=eng
https://lds.org/youth/video/195-dresses?lang=eng
PS - here's a link to a really good documentary I watched, but an example of some of the "unpleasant things" I've studied this semester. It's a full episode, so it's long (we don't have television so I appreciate it when they put entire episodes online of the shows it would actually be worth having television for). WARNING - pictures of extreme starvation - I played the whole thing and really think it's valuable but I had to block the screen/look away several times, and often I couldn't see well through my tears anyway. Don't watch with young children
The Great Famine http://video.pbs.org/video/1853678422
