The National Education Association singles out the first Monday in March as Read Across America Day. Encouraging literacy in kids is absolutely a noble cause, but this is a site targeted at college women. We’ve all learned how to read (sorry, Jared), and we all seem to like it well enough to frequent HerCampus, so what relevance could any of this possibly have to us?
Even if we’ve all outgrown RAA on the technical “these funny shapes make sounds and those sounds make words” level, the values for which it stands can and really ought to last all our lives: a love for diverse stories and storytellers, the power of seeing yourself represented in the media you engage with, and above all, a genuine love for learning. We all like to think we internalized this years ago, but in truth, it is a lifelong process and I can honestly say that I don’t always live up to it.
I’m sure I’m not alone here: with endless physical and digital piles of textbooks, articles, studies, and primary sources to annotate, analyze, and make into essays, most of my reading feels transactional: a piece of evidence for my next paper here, a vocabulary word that will pop up on the exam there. It definitely isn’t helped when endless chapters eat up the time I’d rather be spending with friends, or when I wear down pencils and pens in a desperate bid to keep track of everything lest it turn out to be important later. So here are some tips to conquer book burnout, make your favorite grade school teacher proud, and (hopefully) set you on the right track moving forward:
- Join a library
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A lot of us have on-campus libraries or we figure we can just turn to one online database or another if we need something from elsewhere. But there’s still a lot to be gained from being a member at a library in your area. For one thing, it’s a way into the community beyond the campus – if it’s doing its job right, then kids, elderly people, people your parents’ age, and people our age all have a place. The free wi-fi, legal way to get free books, and awesome librarians also bear a mention here: it’s an affordable and genuinely rewarding place to learn more about the world and the things you are interested in on your own terms, rather than those dictated by your syllabus.
- Make pleasure reading part of your routine
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Pick a book, literally any book that isn’t required for any of your classes, and keep it with you. Contrary to the demon who lives on your shoulder, there is time to do something personal that you like. Set aside some time in your schedule, and read just because it seems interesting. Read a chapter or two before bed, or in the lulls between classes, or on your morning commute (provided you’re not the one driving). It’s no different from any developing any other habit, and no time spent doing something that puts you in a better mindset is time wasted.
- Audiobooks
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One truly wonderful thing about our crazy world is we are less and less bound by physical space, and audiobooks are maybe the A-tier example. Sometimes I actually take a pause to realize that some of my favorite books I read in the past year I experienced from a treadmill in my college’s fitness center. Sure, there’s always that one straw man who will tell you that audiobooks and multitasking are bad for your attention span – ignore them. We are the internet generation; our “reduced attention spans” is just a rallying cry from the old guard who can’t adapt to the information overload that is daily life in the way we’ve been developing since we were toddlers. If the option is available, I absolutely recommend it. And with that, we make it full circle to how it all started, and where the preschool and kindergarten crowd celebrating Read Across America Day are right now: the unique magic of being read to aloud that kick starts a lifelong love for reading.