Reading and Writing: A Look at the Present

"...My colleagues and I have remarked on the increasing numbers of students that we have in our writing emphases, many of whom declare forthrightly that they really love writing but don't like to read so much. This, combined with the steady growth of creative writing programs across the country has led me to muse openly with my provost that we seem to be living and teaching at a moment when everyone wants to express themselves, but no one really cares to read much of anything being expressed."
~Pete Powers, "Reading Ethnic Literature Now"

I know this paragraph is not necessarily the focus of this essay (since it deals more with reading ethnic literature now... hence, of course, its name), but this section struck me quite readily as I was reading. Being a writing emphasis student, I wanted to comment on this... and I will start with my childhood. I was a very avid reader when I was younger. I could finish 300+ page books in less than 2 days. I remember curling up on my living room couch and reading all day long. My mom had to force me to take breaks from reading, because she said my eyes needed a break from 5-6 straight hours of staring at the page. I got lost in those worlds, though. I loved fiction. I didn't read much non-fiction, but that was ok. I was reading, and loving it. And then I finally entered middle school, high school, and eventually college. And my reading-for-pleasure days were over. Inundated with thick college textbooks and reading deadlines, I read just to survive.

Let me switch gears slightly... I have been in so many writing classes where the above quoted scenario has played itself out. I personally know many people who say they are English majors, but qualify it by saying they have a writing emphasis, and therefore do not read much, and then further qualify this by saying, "I'm not your normal English major." As if not reading makes you a "bad" English major, and writers want to be "bad" English majors, because that sets them apart from all the people who just sit and read all day, and then talk about what they read at night. No, we are writers, for goodness sakes, and we actually do something with our lives.

Perhaps I grossly exaggerate. Yes, I really probably do. But I have heard talk like this so many times before... and I would just like to conjecture something... I really do love reading. I could read for hours, and never get tired of soaking up the world through books. But do I do it on a regular basis, especially in addition to normal schoolwork? Not at all. I reached a record high last summer when I read about 8 books throughout ten weeks (you readers are saying, "That's it???"), and I had goals of keeping up extracurricular reading throughout this year. And you guessed... that definitely didn't happen. And I would never say I don't love reading, but I would say that the college lifestyle takes a toll on you... that such intensive study can sometimes make you lose the love you once had for reading (or anything else for that matter). With deadlines and reading of things others choose for us (however good those things may eventually be for us), it's sometimes hard to think of reading as anything else but another thing on the endless to-do list.

But what about those writing students? Because we are so focused on writing our own ideas about the world... with our profound need to express ourselves and assert our own individuality (which is done by most everyone at the college level to some capacity)... we forget that others have things to say too... things that will foster our own thoughts and creativity. But we are so burnt out with keeping up with deadlines and trying to write things that will get us good grades in this grade-conscious society of ours that we feel we have no time to read. And if we have no time, it slips to the sidelines. And soon we think we don't need to read, because we're doing so good without it anyway (our grades are telling us so) and perhaps we say, well, we don't have much of a desire to read anyway. We are writing, and that's what we want to do for the rest of our life.

Along with exaggerating, perhaps I also grossly over-generalize such things. But I think the intensity of college (and even high school) life forces reading (except for those things we must read as dictated by our professors) to the sidelines... and perhaps that is why we don't want to read. We're burnt out, and just trying to keep up with the writing and necessary reading we have to do in class... just something to ponder as we're reaching the end of yet another semester...