uni readings

do you do your readings only when doing assignments or do you do them at any time? Do you do all the recommended readings? How do they come into use when doing assignments IF they're not used only when doing assignments? Like I heard you make notes on the readings but how are you sure if the notes will relate to the essay questions? idk how do you do the readings in general and when I'm so confused

Your readings are how you learn for your degree... they're not a mechanistic as 'just doing them for an essay/assignment'. What course is this?

You usually have starred (or essential) readings and optional readings. The titles of these two categories make them self-explanatory. If you don't have any study skills sessions planned, then contact your library/LRC - they usually run sessions on things like academic reading, note-taking, referencing - all the essential skills you need to get under your belt pronto if you want to do well.

Does this help?

Basically just, read them as you get them, and then you'll have some inkling of them in your mind when you come to do assignments and think "hang on I think I read something that I can use here...". Definitely don't wait until your assignment to do the readings, as you'll just end up running out of time, particularly as you may well be given a bibliogrpahy or suggested readings for a particular essay title anyway which you would need to read at the time. Trying to do that with the week on week readings would be near impossible, I think.

The readings are not "extra" work generally - they are the main source of learning for the most part. Your lectures will normally just be an introduction and/or overview of some topic, or focus on a particular special case study or similar. The readings are what you need to be doing to actually learn what you need for the module for the most part, so you should work on them as they are posted/released. You then will leverage them in your essays, assignments, and in seminars/tutorials based on having already read them and synthesised that knowledge.

It's worth taking core readings seriously, making proper notes, gathering quotes that stand out, noting down your thoughts and ideas arising from them. If you have time, writing a literature review (paragraph?) of a few complex readings is a good way to understand how they relate to each other. I'd do them soon as they are issues rather than last minute, procrastinating with readings means you will rush through and not absorb much. Waste of time.

I also print and keep them filed to go back to whenever, rather than reading online.

PS Evernote is a good app to keep all notes on, and keep a biblio if you want