This is the fifth time I’m reiterating for you the simple fact that reading in college and grad school is just plain not fun.
This is not always true – every now and then you get some exciting insight, but just when you are ready to slow down, relax, and enjoy . . . you have to speed back up again, and log every single thing you can before yet another hour flies by.
But the seasons change. Now time itself is what has slowed down. You aren’t who you were only a couple months ago, and this collection of articles is here to help you with your transition.
You see, something happens when you finish upper-tier schooling, those books you promised yourself you’d go back and read? They just don’t read the same as they did when accessing them was key to your metaphorical survival.
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The books you’ve acquired in mind-numbingly large quantities have lost their edge, but so too have you. I mean look at your twitter feed, it’s all professors of INSERT MAJOR HERE and people using INSERT SOFTWARE SUITE HERE.
So go ahead, take a few deep breaths, click the follow button below TMZ and Alec Baldwin and retweet the latest scandalous photo of Beyonce that Jay-Z doesn’t want you to see. That professor you harbor ill will toward because she gave you a C-? Unfriend her on Facebook . . . you’ll start feeling better.
Finally, take a swig of Makers Mark, throw away those last two 5-Hour Energies, and read this, the final chapter of an irreverent guide crafted especially for recent grads looking to reintegrate with a society of readers with no memory of a transcript or a core concentration.
Part Five of Five. Check out Part One: The Film Studies Grad; Part Two: The Philosophy Grad; and Part Three: The Economics Grad; and Part Four: The Sociologist with a certificate in Interactive Technology.
THE LIT MAJOR
Ah, the dark arts of graduate school literary studies. You didn’t do it for the money, you did it for the Proust. Oh, no? You went the Shelley route? Ah, thought you were taking the easy way out with Frankenstein.
It was all going great until out of nowhere your adviser demands you read all of Mary’s fathers Rosicrucian novels and her husband’s euphemistic poetry and of course her mother’s feminist tracts. It took you more time to nauseously skim these books than it took the Godwin-Shelly family to write them.
Look, you made it through Frankenstein at least, right? Now join a Dean Koontz book club, and when you get to his Frankenstein series, be the smartest one in the room with honest-to-goodness credentialed insight!
What you had to read:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.
What you can read now:
Winner: Frankenstein by Dean Koontz
Runners Up: Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar (ok, this one might have lost a little relevance when a prime time TV show revealed Gossip Girl was actually a stringy-haired adolescent male, but I digress…); Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (you’ve probably read about enough 18th-century theoretical lives in utopias and dystopias, now read a newer book about life in a video game).
RIFers and recent grads! How do you balance reading for school or work with reading for pleasure? Tell us in a comment!
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