14 June 2008

Modern Reading

This guy wrote an article for The Atlantic about us being used to skipping from page to page and skimming articles on the internet, so when we go to read long texts, we have a hard time concentrating. That is exactly my problem today, I even skimmed towards the end of his article, although I found most of it interesting.
However, I think the problem is more that we have so much information to process that we are used to choosing what interests us the most. Let's just say that "The New Penology" is not even the slightest bit interesting to me. You know it's bad when you have to look up word after word in your own language (like "recidivism") and it takes you an hour and a half to read twenty pages. The writer of the Atlantic article said that he and others can't delve into deep reading anymore. I don't have that problem at all. When I allow myself to focus on the reading for my literature classes (after the boring, grueling work is done), I can read and analyze one of those things like there wasn't anything else in the world.

It's way too late to say anything this semester, for which I am very sorry. Next semester, I'm going to see what I can do about adjusting classes to fit my program. It makes no sense for me to be here studying something that is not in my area of specialty! Maybe in a bachelor's program, but not later. I can't possibly imagine that I will some day willingly utilize the things I've learned about criminology today. And now I'm supposed to come up with a presentation linking it to differences between German and American popular culture for the Governing Deviance block seminar that starts on Monday.

I think I may just link it to "the Other" and "savage" in literary theory just so I can bring in something, anything to interest myself. However, I don't know much anything about German government or German popular culture.

As a minuscule sample of things I've read today, take a look at these (and yes, I did get homework done today as well).

Elephant intelligence.

100 Best Novels.
Microwave for Sale.
Germany/English Missionary Dictionary.
BBC Week in Pictures.
Science of Sound.
Baptist Book of Mormon Believer.
History of Blacks Members of the Church.

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