How To Skip The Reading

Happy start of term to undergrads.

Listen up, fuckers. I work in both a high school and university, and have done both concurrently for about ten years now*. Trust, I know when you have not done the reading.

I was a giant nerd in my own undergraduate days, the kind of person people asked to copy notes from, but it would be a lie to say I did all of the reading every week. These tips are for two types of people:

• Maybe you want to learn, but this week or this month or this year has been difficult. I get it. These tips will help you get back on track, or help ease you through the bits you don’t care about as much so you can give your attention to the essay for the end of term or another module.
• Maybe you’re lazy as shit and just want to coast through. Whatever; you do you. These tips will get you better grades on your exams, make studying less stressful, and help avoid conflict with your professor or TA. It may seem counter-intuitive to do work to avoid work, but this is a lesson you will have to learn if you want to have a life in which you do the bare minimum.

Plan In Advance

This one is not always possible, and life happens, but deciding what to focus on in advance means you can skip the details on other things.

Take a look at your courseload at the beginning of term. Ideally, make a charming document which lists all your modules week-by-week on one page so you can see at-a-glance what you will be doing and when. Include assignments or tests in bold or a different colour.

The reason for this is twofold: one, because it will take you longer than a week to read, for example, Middlemarch; and two, because you can pick and choose which weeks will be yours. You should do, at the very least, the reading for alternate weeks, but choose which weeks are the most interesting to you and will make you stand out. On your hypothetical Middlemarch week, there will likely be a lot of students who have not done the reading, making you look good; on a week where the set text is 100 pages, you will be one of many.

Read A Summary

This is the bare minimum of preparation you should be making for a class. I am not running over a plot summary with you, not when you’re perfectly capable of reading a book yourself – and I consider you capable after about 7 years old**. Literally nothing you will be studying as a high schooler or undergraduate will be so obscure it doesn’t have a Wikipedia, Cliff’s Notes, Schmoop page or similar, and you will likely be able to find a youtuber to talk you through the text. Avail yourself of the old acronym: JFGI. Literally just fucking google it and read a single-page summary.

Please bear in mind that any abridgement is making an editorial decision, so be aware that things which are open to interpretation in the text are spoken as fact in a summary, and characters are reduced to fewer dimensions than they have in the original. Be careful of speaking confidently based on a summary and looking stupid.

Read An Extract

Actually, my advice is to read two extracts: a famous passage and a random bit. This will allow you to understand both the broad strokes of criticism and the book in its macro detail, and also develop your own opinion on the style, pacing, and techniques the author uses. When you speak in class you will be informed sufficiently to not look like an idiot.

Read The Additional Materials

Once again, take a look at the syllabus and decide what others may not have read. Prepare this and bring it to the class instead, then speak up in the relevant moments. There are some evergreen texts and theorists in any field (you cannot, for example, go far wrong with Stuart Hall in my classes, and a grounding in literary Lacan will allow you to elucidate whatever your classmates who did the reading are saying). Remember: the goal of this method is not to disagree so much as to reinforce and illuminate – the extra reading is there as a companion to the text.

Come With Questions

Look, they don’t have to be groundbreaking. “What is Punch Magazine?” or the context of any word that was unfamiliar to you is enough to suggest you’re trying. The real trick is to google an answer, and couch your question in a top-line “I’ve read that it’s this, but I’m not sure of the significance” sort of a summary.

If you’re not sure, search on Jstor or look for a super-famous scholar who wrote a seminal work on the book. “Is Heathcliff A Murderer?” idk man, it takes several pages to argue conclusively either way.

What If I Don’t Want To?

Have you considered that college education may not be for you? A lot of things people are proud to say they learned in college – doing their own laundry, cooking for themselves, developing adult relationships and interpersonal skills and time management – actually have nothing to do with the university experience. You could just move out.

We live in a culture where we tend to prejudice a college education as a requirement to be middle-class, and, honestly, that’s bullshit. Unironically, as somebody working on a PhD, I can promise you that you will learn plenty, and perhaps even get above your cohort studying, if you apply yourself to something outside of academia, whether that’s a difficult to break into career path like music or acting, a practical skill like tailoring or being a mechanic, or developing soft and transferrable skills that will lead to a solid career as a PA, customer service operative, or manager. There is nothing wrong with working retail or other ‘dead end jobs’ to fund a passion (my passion just so happens to have been academia), and nothing wrong with letting your passion be ‘life’ – kids, travel, parties – or letting that job in fast food showing you how to run a business of your own.

You can also join education later, when you know what you want, and not feel like you wasted thousands and your youth on, say, hotel management, when you really just wanted to travel, and have decided teaching in international schools is the life you want.

Consider your own self in your education, but also consider your classmates and the underpaid adjunct or overworked professor delivering your class. Being the best version of yourself involves self care, interior analysis, and awareness of other people. Consider that when laziness is the thing between you and all of the above, and dig deep to find that motivation.

*How? Sheer force of will, the love of a good man, and several menty bs. Why? Because academia doesn’t pay (and neither do you – subscribe here).

**I’ve taught Shakespeare to 7 year olds. You can learn it too.

On This Topic:

• Is Heathcliff A Murderer? Idk man but John Sutherland thinks he does.
• I’m not organised, I’m held together by washi tape and google drive. If I can do it you can too.
• The advice I give to my very young students is: just do it. Want to be a journalist? Get a blog. Want to be a YouTube tech reviewer? Start uploading videos based on stats you read online. Anything you do will become portfolio, evidence of tenacity and deservitude, and a path to improvement.

To-Do:

• Clean watch.
• Prod Jane Austen peeps.
• Read 50SOG feedback.

Today’s Culture:

• Coral lips. Taylor Swift is bringing back coral lips!! I love a coral, I’m so excited (though I did throw most of mine out – please can I have coral lipstick for my birthday? I like Chanel for bold colours as they keep it classy XOXO)
• I just cannot with this week’s New Music Friday. Please y’all, spread the releases, I can’t listen to 4 albums and a single on the bus to work. Anyway stream Raye’s new single.
• I have been eating so much fruit since starting at my new workplace and I would personally like to thank the chef team for always saving me some.