“What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.”
- Thomas Carlyle

The two quotes above are among some of my favorites.  Upon first read you might think they cast professors in a negative light.  I do not believe this.  In my case, I want to grow up to be a computer programmer.  There is no professor on this planet that will have time to teach me everything I will need to know or that I should know.  I have to take some responsibility in learning outside of the classroom.

I have spent a lot of time listening to fellow students bellyache that the professor did not teach them this or that.  I usually ask them how much time they spent trying to learn it on their own.  I usually receive blank stares.  I then suggest that they spend some time outside of class or with some reference material other than the professor’s lecture.  Once they have read and partially digested this material, try posing questions to the professor on stuff you do not understand.

I spent a few years as a tutor in my community college days. I was supposed to be tutoring beginning programming students but often it was more like being a babysitter.  I would suggest they try something and for the most part they sat there and stared blankly at me waiting for me to start dictating code to them.  That was not my job.  I often time think the professors took great delight in me weeding out the incapable since they could not.  Of the 18 students that I had over three years, only one of them still has anything to do with programming. 

Let us keep in mind that this was a community college classroom and there were students in that classroom that had no business being there.  I believe some of them had issues using a computer, yet they thought they might be programmers.  There were some that were in the class because they risked getting welfare benefits cut and if the story that my slightly dubious acquaintance tells is to be believed one was even there to do nothing but find a husband.

We all have talents or skills and eventually we learn what they are and where to best apply them.  I can not sing, play an instrument or even write nice stories.  I will not be trying to do any of those for a living.  All of those things require work and practice outside of a classroom so why people seem to think a professor has time to personally hold their hand and spoon feed them everything, I will never know.

One of my earliest educational memories begins in second grade. I attended Fairview Elementary School in Ottumwa, IA and I was lucky to have Mrs. June Lowe for my teacher. Mrs. Lowe encouraged reading, or dare I say she pushed reading. I am told by my father that my attempts at reading actually began much earlier. He told me tales of my 4 year old self and the times when I would get on his lap while he was reading the newspaper and I would try to read too. From his story I apparently had some level of skill beyond that of a normal 4 year old. I actually could read a number of words on my own.

In my second grade class was Lisa Strasko, my competitor. As I recall, Lisa was about my reading level and as such we competed with each other in our programmed readers and SRA’s. I don’t even remember what SRA stands for but I do remember that they were cards with stories on one side and questions on the other, and they were color coded. Thinking back, and remember it has been 35 years or so, Mrs. Lowe seems to have fostered the competition between Lisa and I. We were given special library privileges and often Lisa and I would be allowed to go to the library to read while Mrs. Lowe taught reading and spelling to the rest of the class.

From this early beginning I became quite a voracious reader. Why others refuse to read is beyond my comprehension. There are books covering just about every imaginable topic. I am a fiction reader myself. My wife tends to prefer biographies and non-fiction. Books provide learning, adventure, exploration and other qualities too numerous to mention. For the most part libraries are free and they hold worlds of information and entertainment. In most cases that I know of, if a library does not have a book you want, they can get it through the inter-library loan system (usually a small fee is involved).

I can only assume that the lack of reading is due to our increasingly short attention spans. A TV program can tell much the same story in a two hour movie that may take us several days to read in a book.

As a student, I do not read much that is not a textbook right now. In order to get my does of fiction I listen to audio books instead. I have a book in the car at most all times so I can listen on my commute to work or my drive to school. I have discovered a secret, if you find a good audio book narrator who is reading a series of books by an author, try listening to one of the series on audio before reading any of the other books. A good narrator give voice to his or her characters, a voice that you can hear in your head as you read later books in the series. Two of my favorites are George Guidall and CJ Critt. Both do a lot of work for Books On Tape.

I would like to encourage any non readers to listen to a book and see if that suits better than print. Most libraries do have a selection of audio books to choose from.