Number two never worked for me. Either I must have been doing something wrong, or the classes were not structured in a way which one could do this efficiently.

Number two never worked for me. Either I must have been doing something wrong, or the classes were not structured in a way which one could do this efficiently. I often found I would waste my time reading fluff content that was never pertinent. Either the teacher didn't follow the book closely, had a terrible choice of textbook, or I didn't have a context from which to read the book to put it's material into perspective.