Gallagher Blogs: Kendra Albert, now a 2L at Harvard, tried to recapture her enthusiasm for reading in the months before she started law school. You can hear her describe "The Great Book Project of 2013" at the Boston Quantified Self Meetup here. She discusses books, technology, and more in her blog, Lawspeak for L33t Speakers.
6 comments:
I think reading for pleasure is quite an underrated thing. I know I'm not as good as I should be about reading other things while I've been in school but I started reading a lot more when I graduated from undergrad. I could count on one hand the number of books I read for pleasure when I was in undergrad and I forgot how much I liked reading. But when I graduated I became very important to me and a way to wind down at the end of the day. So when I went back to grad school I made sure that I read a little bit every day for me. And it's helped keep me a bit more sane. I know that when I get really busy and don't have this time to myself I get much more snippy. So I encourage everyone to find something that helps you decompress from the daily rigors of whatever you are doing because otherwise you will go insane. If you read all the time when you were younger and haven't the time to do it now I really suggest that you find the time because it is very helpful.
Although we are not in a law program, I think that these types of constraints on leisure reading can be prevalent for anyone in school. I'm worried about our generation in particular when it comes to reading. Everyone takes breaks from their schoolwork, no matter how busy they are. But I think many of the breaks that we take go toward short-attention based distractions, like Facebook or other forms of social media. Rather than committing to a 30 minute break every few hours, I know that at least what I tend to do, is take sporadic, short breaks. I think that if I made the choice to schedule breaks, I could chose to use that time to do something more productive, that is still a break from my work, like reading. It would definitely be a good idea to try to work on that.
Reading for pleasure presents quite a conundrum for me. From when I could first read, all they way through high school I read avidly, frequently, and with abandon. But upon arriving at college I found that the part of my life reserved for "non work" was synonymous with "social life". I had near-instant access to friends, and the time I used to read in high school became time (well spent) building relationships. In addition, I feel reading requires me to keep some part of my brain "on". After a day of classes, and homework, and meetings, reading for pleasure doesn't present itself as a pleasure so much as an effort expenditure. That said, when I am home on breaks, books are a main source of comfort and repose. Pleasure reading - for me - is just not a compatible part of college life.
My biggest struggle with pleasure reading is actually picking material. My time for pleasure reading is so limited that, rather than try and find a new book or subject, I tend to end up re-reading Harry Potter for the 139250923409274th time. Harry Potter is great, I love Harry Potter (clearly), but lately I've been thinking about trying to come up with some kind of challenge that involves only reading new books for x period of time. This shouldn't be hard, there are gazillions of books in print that aren't Harry Potter, and yet, whenever I try to start one, I get distracted or something else, and out comes J.K. Rowling. I think I will maybe try to make a New Year's resolution or challenge. There are so many classics that are in the public domain and available for free on Amazon that I really have no excuse.
It's nice to know that a lot of people haven't lost their love of reading. I really wish that I had the time to read as much as I did when I was younger, but much in the way that Amanda mentioned, I've found it sadly too difficult to make the time (although there is a slight chance that this comes down to bad time management). When I was in middle and high school, I was almost always reading something, and a lot of times I miss being able to set everything aside for a little while. Having seen this article, I think it's a good idea to try to concentrate on one thing for a little while, which I am sure to do in the weeks that I have free.
One of the things I hate most about having so much work is how little I get to read for fun. I think that leisure reading a multitude of things from several different genres really stretches your mind and your perception of the world around you. Last year for my Interpretation and Argument class, I ended up writing about people's reading habits and was shocked to find out how quickly the sale of books was declining. Of course some of this is due to the use of the internet as a tool for reading, but a lot of it comes from the fact that people just aren't as interested in reading anymore. I hope that in the future we can find a way to re invigorate peoples interest in book and language arts in general as they are so important to culture.
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