Geoffrey MillerVerified account

This. Grad school is a time for reading at least 50 books & 300 papers a year. If you do, imposter syndrome will melt away. You'll know more about the current state of your field than most professors do, & it will show.https://twitter.com/wishcrys/status/1053110232145059840 …

And how does one have time to actually do their graduate work and do 3 years worth of reading per year. If you’re reading a paper in little more than a day, you aren’t really reading it. (Of course mileage may vary by academic discipline.)

One of my professors recommended reading a paper or book “like a comic book” ... following the argument, but not trying to grasp the proofs completely unless something seemed implausible or wrong. Then you can go back for deeper study for things that seem important.

I try to work thru things at least a bit if a step isn’t obvious to me or if I think there’s a technique that I might find useful. Between that and the interruptions of actually doing my grad work meant it was more like, say 75 papers a year I could possibly get thru.

Probably depends on your field. Physics has all that nasty physical reality and data and stuff.