Graduate student
Dr. Sofia Almeida
Academic research
Problem
Dr. Sofia Almeida is an adult graduate student writing a literature review. Her library tab has more papers than her week can hold, and highlights do not add up to an argument. She has seen classmates ask a chatbot for citations and then discover the papers do not exist. She will not do that. She wants help turning papers she actually downloaded into comparable notes: question, method, finding, and limitation. The synthesis has to remain hers. Gemini may structure her reading. It may not invent a source, a page number, or a quotation.
Gemini strategy
Sofia exports a short passage or her own notes from a paper she has open, with the bibliographic details she copied from the PDF. She asks Gemini to fill a fixed note template and to mark a gap instead of filling it. The prompt forbids new citations. When she wants connections, she pastes several of her verified notes and asks for tensions and overlaps, each tied to a note she labeled. Her verification step is to reopen the PDF and confirm every quotation and page before it enters her review. If the model names a paper she did not provide, she deletes the paragraph.
Prompts
Make a note from this excerpt only
You are helping a graduate student take structured notes. I will paste a bibliographic citation I copied from the PDF and an excerpt or my notes. Fill only this template: research question, method, finding, limitation, and a quotation I might use. If the excerpt does not contain an item, write "not in the excerpt." Do not add other papers, DOIs, page numbers, or quotations. Do not invent a finding to make the note sound complete. Use cautious language such as "the excerpt says." End by listing anything I need to check in the full PDF before I cite it.
Compare notes I already verified
I will paste several reading notes that I have already checked against the PDFs. Compare them. List overlaps, tensions, and gaps in the set. Every point must name the note label I used, such as Note A. Do not add sources, quotations, or authors that are not in my notes. Do not write my literature review paragraph for me. If two notes use different terms for a similar idea, show both terms and let me decide. Separate what the papers report from what I might argue later. Remind me to recheck any line before it enters the draft.
Process
- 1. Copy citation details from the PDF, not from a chat.
- 2. Fill the template and leave blanks where the excerpt is silent.
- 3. Reopen the PDF and confirm quotations and pages.
- 4. Compare only verified notes, then write the synthesis herself.
Result
Sofia's estimate is that note-taking is slightly faster and much more even across papers, which makes the outline easier to see. She still reads. The model twice suggested a related paper she had not supplied, and she deleted both suggestions instead of chasing phantom citations. A supervisor liked that her notes separated findings from her commentary. The review is not finished, and she does not claim the tool improved her grade. She describes the gain as fewer hours spent reconstructing what a paper said, provided she had opened it.
Lessons
- Never ask for citations the model can invent; start from PDFs you have.
- A blank field is more honest than a fluent guess.
- Reopen the source before a quotation or page number enters the draft.