By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 3, 2012
Congratulations! We’re officially a third of the way through the semester. Welcome to October – the month of scarves, pumpkins and midterms. It’s the time of year when the leaves starting turning vibrant shades of red and yellow, and the time of year that all the reading you haven’t done is starting to catch up to you. May I suggest pulling a couple of late nights in the library to get yourself caught up before you seriously regret it?
But let’s turn back to that verb for a second: reading. To read. I read, you read, the class reads. But when did that verb take such an ominous tone?
Reading.
I have reading to do.
The prof assigned us so much reading.
I can’t go to the movies tonight, guys – I have to do my reading.
I remember loving reading as a kid. I’d go to the library every week and sometimes twice a week, checking out 10 or 15 books at a time. I couldn’t help myself. Everything looked so exciting and fascinating. I recall several titles with fondness – The Phantom Tollbooth, for instance, or Harold and the Purple Crayon. I dug myself a little nest in Shel Silverstein for a while and stayed there.
Maybe one of the most exciting discoveries was venturing out of fiction and into the realm of non-fiction, checking out every single book in the Eyewitness series for starters and then diving into dinosaurs, origami and pirates. One of my favourites was titled Fire and Ice, which had glorious huge pictures of glassblowing in action. I haven’t touched that giant volume in over a decade, but I’m pretty sure I’ll remember the red-hot illustrations forever.
The world is pretty damn exciting, especially when you’re 12. So what happened to that excitement? When was the last time you remember being excited about your reading?
Reading.
I have reading to do.
I’m behind on my reading.
I’d better catch up on my reading.
There isn’t even a single iota of excitement in any of those sentences. As I write this, I have four classes-worth of reading to do and three textbooks awaiting my highlighter. But I’m not excited about any of it. My textbooks are a battlefield, and I’ll get in and get out as fast as I can, underlining relevant paragraphs and ideas in some kind of mad dash.
Every semester I buy a new set of highlighters and promise that I’ll stay up-to-date on my reading. Not once have I kept this promise to myself. There’s always one chapter (and usually more than one) that I skip over entirely. Last semester there was one textbook that I didn’t open until the week before the final exam.
Reading.
I have reading to do.
I should probably do that reading for tomorrow.
I don’t know how to fix this absolute disinterest in textbooks, and I’m at the point where I’m just going to give up and power through. Battlefield. Crack that book open, gather up the necessary knowledge like wounded soldiers, and get the hell out.
But despite the mountain of reading I have staring at me from my to-do list, I did something this week that I’ve never had the guts to do before.
I had just gotten home from work, and was cooking some dinner. I had 20 minutes to waste while it was in the oven.
I feel like reading, I thought to myself. Then, guiltily, I should probably do that reading.
I have that reading to do.
I should catch up on my reading.
But then I rebelled.
Fuck it, I thought. I’m going to read some Vonnegut.
And I did. Because there’s a part of me that loves reading, and textbooks don’t count as reading.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s a difference between reading and doing reading. Whatever you do, don’t mistake one for the other – because there’s still a shiny, exciting world waiting for you. I’m just saying it’s probably not in your textbook.
Although I still recommend pulling some late nights because you will seriously regret it.
