Reading a Schematic
A schematic is not a picture of a board. It is a graph: components are nodes, and the wires between them — nets — are edges. Two points drawn at opposite corners of the page with the same net label are the same electrical point, as surely as two references to the same object in memory. Once you read it as a graph rather than as a drawing, the intimidating density stops mattering, because you are never reading the whole thing. You are tracing one path.