Attention & retention

Another Sunday spent reading social theory...but how much of this am I retaining?

I'm doing the readings for my Political Economy of Communications & Culture course. And since I joined the class late, I've got a lot of catching up to do.

Yes the underlying topic and approach fascinate me. Particularly in the way Canadian PEC theorist Vincent Mosco argues for a multilayered integrated analysis that privileges neither economics/materialist arguments (a la Marx / Frankfurt school) nor culture and individual/everyday arguments (a la Hall, Fiske and Williams). But if I'm so interested in this and I see so many tie-ins to my eventual MA thesis, why don't I retain the essence of the arguments?

You'd think that by now I'd know the various generalized theories about capitalism, cold. A year hasn't passed since I started this academic odyssey that I don't read some substantial bit of Marx, along with theorists extending the Marxian concepts out to various avenues of exploration.

But I still, to this day, have to constantly brush up on "use value" and "surplus value", not to mention the ideas of a "historical materialism" etc. etc.

Is it age? Is it simply a question of conditioning (e.g. raised to believe anything economic was boring)?

Whatever it is, I would like to conquer it. It is holding me back.