For my entire high school career I was under the horrendously asinine assumption that because I was smart (or so all the adults around me reported) I shouldn’t have had to really work at learning; I should have been able to look at the information once and instantly absorb and understand it. That approach never worked out as well as I’d imagined it would.

Needing further proof of my non-super-humanness, I continued to assume that I had instant absorption and comprehension abilities when I hit college. Furthermore, I added a whole new branch to my stupidity: I assumed that because both of my grandfathers were science professors, I should of course be capable of comprehending all the science-related jargon in my biology courses instantaneously, no learning curve required. I had no proof, not even a glimmer of a fact to base this on. For the grandchild of research scientists, that was some stellar use of the scientific method.

And, continuing even farther along the now hopelessly moronic road of ill-logic, I figured that since both of my grandfathers were scientists, it was in my genetic make-up to be able to read and instantly understand scientific research papers, which are not known for simplicity or the use of layman’s terms. Of course! That totally makes sense. Because everyone knows that if your mom is a surgeon, you can skip medical school and just grab a scalpel, open up Joe Schmoe and fix him right up. You were in your mom’s uterus for Pete’s sake. You therefore have innate surgical skills imprinted in your DNA. Everyone knows that. It’s sound biological reasoning.

Or not. You know, now that I’m older and I really think about it. Well, that’s a shame. Having a biologically built-in understanding of scientific flim-flam (technical term) would have really come in handy for me. After I gave up on my imprinted-DNA theory, I spent a lot of time deciphering reading material the same way every other student has to: looking up words and then terms and, finally, whole ideas and theories until I understood every piece and could reassemble the whole picture and it made sense.

Too late for me, I came across this very helpful tidbit via Lifehacker. It’s a simple guide to reading scientific research papers. The author does an excellent job of explaining how to read with maximum comprehension. She also points out to everyone who didn’t already know (I think only me) scientific research papers are a bitch to read and there’s a method to getting through them. Avoid making my mistakes–it’s always better to make your own new and exciting ones.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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