Did you ever use Cliff Notes, Monarch Notes, SparkNotes in school?

Yes.

Yes. I almost always read the books but it provided a good summary and called out things that were key points, was a good resource to have while I was writing a paper--you could quickly figure out which chapter something happened in.

I once wrote an entire paper on Hamlet based on the question and answer section of the Cliffnotes

I sometimes used Cliff Notes, I went to an art high school, we had three extra classes a day, the art classes were college level.

High school days were very long. School was an actual job back then. Let's not forget, there was no internet to do research, after school you had to haul your ass to a library or, if you were lucky, you had a set of encyclopedias at home to do your research.

Today's kids are fucking clueless. Everything is conveniently at their fingertips yet, so many of them are still epic failures.

Does Cliff Notes still exist?

When I was in high school (early 70s), I was clueless. Not like R4 alludes to, but ignorant. I didn't know that any of the titular notes existed, and don't know if they would have been available to me in my podunk town.

I fucked my way through school and all I got to show for it was stupidly

Did you attend DeVry Academy, OP? There were no Cliff Notes for the recherché German and French literature in the courses at my hoity toity college.

I'm like R6. I didn't know about them until I was in college, and was quite upset. I wish I had discovered them earlier.

I knew they existed but never used them. Maybe because we didn’t live near any stores that sold them? also they cost money. Still got As in English.

As an adult I understand the value of knowledge vs mere grades but when you’re a kid, you don’t quite grasp that distinction.

We were poor. There wasn't money for that. So I had to apply myself and learn the material. If it wasn't in the family Britannica, I wasn't reading it. Thankfully, I excelled at that subject matter, and enjoyed it.

[quote]When I was in high school (early 70s), I was clueless. Not like [R4] alludes to, but ignorant. I didn't know that any of the titular notes existed, and don't know if they would have been available to me in my podunk town.

Cliff Notes were available in book stores, there were tons of book stores where I grew up.

Guess the level of 'cluelessness' was dependent on your family background and where you lived? My background was lower middle class, but I was always surrounded by creativity, mostly art and music. As a kid I would watch foreign films on PBS.

My dad was an electrician and my mom a secretary. Beyond their professions, both were creative. My dad sketched and painted, my mom designed and sewed her own clothing. There were working musicians in my family and a relative owned a small ad agency. He was one of the first people in the family to attend college.

Even the laborers in my family had creative interests. My grandfather owned a small bakery, he was self taught on piano.

Due to so much creativity in the family, my siblings and I were very curious. Same for my cousins. At young ages, we realized there was more to life than toys, comic books and TV. I was drawing at 4-5 years old, I knew I wanted to do something with my ability.

Reality TV and social media has really given today's youth a warped view of life. The internet, which was supposed to bring people together, has actually alienated so many people.

You don't want to identify as working class, R12?

[quote] We were poor. There wasn't money for that.

You didn't have to buy them, just read them in the bookstore.

Or you or your friends had siblings who took the same class and passed them down

It's not like they came out with an updated "Scarlet Letter" guide every year.

Yes, I didn’t read any of the assigned books throughout high school. Used the cliff notes synopsis that took 15 minutes to read and got all A’s in English.

I never used them in a high school; but in college I took a French Lit class - in French. I could handle the novel, but when it came to Rousseau’s Confessions I needed the Cliff Notes en Anglais, merci.

Nope. Knew about them and considered them cheating. School wasn't too difficult for me though with the exception of Math and Chemistry.

Sometimes if I had a rough going reading German literature I would get read the translation as well for chapters or passages that weren't clear. Earlier, in HS, most of the books in were enjoyable and far from complex so why would one need cliff notes? Was being on the football team so distracting and time-consuming, gals?

I was a really good student and used to read all the assigned books, but in AP English, I couldn't get the fuck through "Heart of Darkness"; it wasn't even that long a book, but getting through it you needed something like a verbal machete. So I used Monarch Notes, which helped a bit, but not that much.

Actually, in high school teachers recommended them for Shakespeare and Chaucer just to make sure we understood. The tests were so detailed though that it didn’t really help though.

I’m still pissed that my teacher gave such a hard test on Orwell’s 1984 that I failed even when I read and enjoyed the book.

And you can’t say I’m an idiot as I went on to get multiple degrees with 4.0 GPAs.

[quote]You don't want to identify as working class, [R12]?

OK troll, I'll bite. You do comprehend, there are specific divisions within the classes, especially in the US. Being middle class in the UK means the person is usually from a posh and wealthy background. I attended college in the UK, while there, I sure learned about differences in class delineations. Middle class in the UK has a completely different meaning than what it means in the US.

My family was not working class, the younger generations transcended the immigrant factions who were working class, yet skilled. In today's world, so many working class people have zero skills.

Do you know any working class people who own ad agencies and their own businesses?

Electricians, and other skilled laborers in the US, make a lot of money, especially those in union jobs, you cannot be this clueless. A relative and a close friend are both electricians, they both own their businesses, have a staff and are millionaires.

[quote]Earlier, in HS, most of the books in were enjoyable and far from complex so why would one need cliff notes?

Lots of high school students, especially those in vocational schools, such as the 'Fame' school in NYC, had many extra classes, they didn't have much time to research. Others were simply too lazy to read the assigned books and some were allergic to Shakespeare, Dickens and books they found ponderous, for those types of students, it was much easier to use Cliff Notes. This isn't too deep to comprehend.

The difference between the stable working class and the "lower middle class" has been nil for at least 30 years, with the erosion of the stability of the lower middle class. It's entirely self-definition. Many Americans prefer to identify as "middle class" even if they will admit to "lower middle class".

[quote]The difference between the stable working class and the "lower middle class" has been nil for at least 30 years, with the erosion of the stability of the lower middle class. It's entirely self-definition. Many Americans prefer to identify as "middle class" even if they will admit to "lower middle class".

What are you some type of historian? I'm free to call my family background whatever the fuck I want to call it.

Thanks to the vile ReThugs, soon there won't be a "middle class". The GOP have always been trying to dismantle the middle class, to make them poor. To make anything positive into a negative. They'd love to get rid of unions, to give yet more tax write-offs to the rich, to take away social service programs which have been working for years, to basically make middle class Americans lives completely miserable.

In few short years, if the ReThugs get their way, the US will be a dictatorship, with extremely poor people and the very wealthy. There will no longer be a middle class.

Keep flapping your lips.

[quote]Cliff Notes

Oh, dear.

R25 sounds like we agree on most of this situation. And I said exactly what you said - people between working class and lower middle class get to self define. Reading skills?

I used Ray Notes

I wish they had No Fear Shakespeare when I was a young'in. There's a side by side translation of Shakespeare into modern English (left side original, right side modern). Of course, that boils the plays down to plot, and for a classroom test you have to know what the original lines are, but having something like NFS would have been a big help.

Sometimes I even found the Cliffs Notes too dense, or the professor would deliberately choose a book there weren't Cliffs Notes for, or ask something knowing it wasn't in the Cliffs Notes.

I didn’t use them as a student, but I now use them teaching when there is a time crunch and I have to frantically consult the plot of a book I forget or never had to read.

I used them constantly as a high school students.

In my 20’s, I decided to read the actual books that were assigned in high school and realized how great they really were.

I didn’t when I was an undergraduate, because I went to an exceedingly snobbish school, where matters of intellect were concerned.

Now? Fuck it, if I wanted know something about some book quickly, I’d dive head long to the Internet version of Cliff Notes/Spark Notes whatever they have that would give me the quickest summaries in the simplest language

I am surprised that Wikipedia did not put those companies out of business - most "great books" are summarized at the same level of detail

They're called [bold]Cliffs[/bold] Notes.

Just to be pedantic, it's Cliff with an S at the end. Cliffs not Cliff - and no apostrophe for some reason.

They were literally sold by a guy named Cliff, Clifton Hillegass, starting in 1958 - hence "Cliff's" Notes. He bought the U.S. rights to the idea of the books from a guy named Jack Cole who sold "Coles Notes" in Canada.

So, again, Cliffs Notes not Cliff Notes. Tho they've now smushed the words together for their current company, so t's CliffsNotes but that's neither here nor there really.

No.

During my freshman fall, we got a writing assignment on "The Tempest" and, the week after we turned it in, the professor announced that 15 of 18 essays had relied heavily on Cliff's Notes and would be graded "F" if the students who wrote them did not claim and re-write them for the next week. I had never heard of CliffsNotes, thankfully. I went to the bookstore after class to see what they were all about, but never dared touch them after that.

STFU R34.

Go jump off a fucking cliff.

No way. I was a born literary critic. Nobody was going to tell ME what Hamlet meant.