How do you know when you know something? Well, a person generally feels confident about his ability to do something if he has been tested and has shown his mastery of the thing in the test-like situation. However, when you're reading material (whether for research or for a course), there’s not always a test for you to take to check your understanding of the material. So what can you do?
The answer: Be able to go from abstract to concrete, and from concrete to abstract.
For example, if you claim to understand a loop construct in the C programming language, an abstract way of demonstrating your knowledge of this construct would be to say that “it’s a programming control statement that allows for the same statements to be repeated.” A concrete way of demonstrating your understanding of a loop programming construct in C would be to write a loop in the C language.
Often, authors will talk at a high-level, so you will need to be able to drill down and be able to generate your own example based on what you’ve heard, read, or seen. As another example, if you come across a sentence that mentions an enterprise network, and you can't come up with a clear picture in your mind of what constitutes an enterprise network, it would be safe to assume that you do not understand the term "enterprise network." If you can’t come up with concrete examples, or find it difficult to do so, you may assume that you probably don’t have a complete and solid grasp of the material. So when you come across material that makes you uncomfortable, see if you can come up with a concrete example of what you’re talking about easily. If you can, you should feel your level of comfort increase and anxiety decrease.
After doing this for a little while, you should be able to get the hang of it to the point that you can do this for many of the technical papers you read. You'll find that your reading experiences will be more challenging yet rewarding and dare I say it--FUN.
Cheers!
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