I had one of those weird classes today where apparently my reaction to the texts was different from other people's. A lot of folks, including the professor, said one reading in particular was very difficult. Now, no doubt it wasn't an easy piece, but I have found a lot of other pieces this semester more challenging. (This isn't an underhanded way of praising myself for being smarter than the other kids; there have been other readings where the situation was entirely reversed.) Moreover, I found it very helpful in clearing up some other stuff we've read that I've never quite gotten, whereas some folks - and this isn't too strong a word - hated it.
This kind of thing is interesting when it happens, especially because it's not a case of where the reading was clearer to one person because it fell within their specialty or because they have experience with the method. Sometimes a student just finds a work unexpectedly difficult, or really engages with something, and it seems like there is no good reason.
2 comments:
Contrast this to reading club/class in the sciences (which has a higher percentage of people who don't like reading):
Leader: "Did anyone read the paper?"
*silence*
Audience member: "Why don't you summarize it for us"
Other audience member: "Let's talk about the graphs"
I had a professor who said, "There are two kinds of people who read journal articles. One reads only the text, and the other reads only the graphs."
(Which, come to think of it, leaves out economists entirely.)
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