The thing is, most academic work up to perhaps your upperclassman work in college is very much not about going off into the woods and coming back with knowledge

The thing is, most academic work up to perhaps your upperclassman work in college is very much not about going off into the woods and coming back with knowledge from far off. Its about being on topic with whats actually being covered in class, and merely paying attention should be sufficient. I have graded student essays in this internet era, and you can tell when they refer to outside sources. Not a bad thing if its not plagiarized and cited, but its almost like knowledge vomit. I am testing them on X and Y since I talked about X and Y in class, and you get full marks by showing you paid attention to x and y in class and understand them. These knowledge vomit essays, I see they don’t really understand X or Y and desperately try and fill the page with everything from alpha to omega that was linked on the wikipedia article. It probably takes more work, in a panicked state the night before the deadline I imagine, parsing this stuff out gauging validity from various online sources and trying to meet teacher expectations, than just taking notes in class and studying solely from that content. I even offer recordings and slides of my lectures so students are encouraged to study solely that material, and not go down some rabbit hole off topic.