ABSTRACT
Imagine a student named Jill. It is 10:00 PM on a Tuesday night. Volleyball practice finished at 7:00, her dinner was pizza and soda during the sorority rush event, and she just received a message from her supervisor who needs her to work an extra shift the next day. She is assessing her homework situation and finds she has calculus problems due for her 9 AM class, an English paper worth a quarter of her grade is due on Friday, she has a history exam also on Friday, and they are starting chapter 3 “Human Development” in introductory psychology tomorrow. The psychology professor encourages her class to read the chapters by administering 5-point quizzes over the 30 or so pages of reading each week. Knowing that it will take her 2 or 3 hours to read the entire chapter (3 hours if she counts time lost to telephone calls and nodding off at her desk), Jill spends the next 30 minutes skimming through the long chapter and makes a list of all the terms and definitions that appear in boldface font. She hopes to get a few quiz questions correct with this approach. She promises herself she will go back and read the full chapter this weekend. Of course, she promises herself that every week and it has yet to happen.
