Job, salary, social status
It’s been a harrying couple of weeks, I can tell you—but I won’t, because confessional blogging is not really my bag. What I will tell you is that in times of crisis, there’s comfort in this book by Eugene H. Ehrlich, which I keep in my office at school:
The copyright date is 1961, and there’s no question that this copy was well-used: exercises completed, passages underlined, spine creased like hell. The pages are dark brown and flake off at the slightest touch. You might think that its age would keep it from being relevant. But think again.
It’s true: So much does depend on the grades you get in school, especially your social status. Ehrlich invites us to consider, as the previous owner of this book clearly did, How good are your work habits?
Take a look at the questions starting on the bottom of page 2, and the answers our erstwhile scholar marked (and, when it was really important, circled in red). He—if this book teaches anything, it’s that students and teachers alike are always male—has difficulty concentrating on his work, doesn’t know how to outline or write a book review, and has to read everything “over and over again” before getting it. He has, the book makes plain, “fundamental study problems.” But hey: He can write a clear sentence and understands almost all the words he reads and hears. His “vocabularly” (sic) is still growing. He has learned, because Ehrlich tells him (and us!), that a good student “does not have to be outstandingly intelligent, but he must know how to use his time.” Why? Because “the course load is heavy, the competition keen.”
So the book includes a series of speed reading tests, wherein the reader writes down the time he starts reading a passage, the time he stops, and the elapsed time in seconds.
Speed Test IV deserves to be quoted in full:
For an English course, you may be assigned the reading of Daisy Miller, by Henry James, a short novel of the experiences of an American girl in Europe. After reading it, you will have the task of reviewing it in a short paper. The excerpt reproduced here comes at the very end of the novel. Daisy is dead, and the story must conclude. Your purpose in reading is to determine how the narrative is resolved, how certain loose ends are tied together. How quickly can you read?
First of all, thanks, How to Study Better, for the heads-up on spoiling the ending. Second, is this really the best way to read literature? The previous owner certainly couldn’t do it.
In addition to making us self-conscious about our reading speeds, the book later asks us to think about all of our reading deficiencies.
Once again, our student is bracingly honest and self-critical, although I have a hard time believing he never skips lines.
There’s more in here, so much more, including whole chapters on how to listen in lecture, how to make the most of lab time, how to do your math homework. We’re told, with regard to term papers, that “an excellent source of topics is the list of suggested topics which your teacher may furnish,” because “your teacher will not suggest an area for study unless he knows that material is available in your library,” and that “the best reason for rejecting suggested topics is that they do not interest you.” But most importantly, Eugene H. Ehrlich reassures us that although we may have long lists of failings, as students and as people, being better is a simple, three-step process:
It’s almost Zen, or at least fortune cookie. And the previous owner of How to Study Better and Get Higher Marks, who clearly returned to this book for inspiration time and again, must have needed it. Because, as evidenced by what he wrote on the last blank page, he knew what it was to live in times of crisis.
“Pregnancy out of wedlock caused by parents—
Thing wrong with world today is that people have taken God out of their lives.”
Stay in school.
I love that the little blurb at the beginning starts with the word “Nowadays.” And then at the end, we get what’s wrong with the world today. Turns out it’s not that so much–including social status–depends on good grades. Turns out the problem is fucking. But I guess that’s another book.
i, too, try to underscore the important parts of the book. But everything seems important to me!
So I underscore the whole damn book.
It took me four days to read this… which means I am reading at approximately 0.07 WPM. Not bad.
[...] working on my marks and bouncing to club jams, I have to agree with Sean Lovelace: the last month has really sucked. So [...]