Chapter 1: Reading Foundations

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Even before you begin a college reading assignment, you have the opportunity to lay the foundation for success or failure. It’s a matter of attitude: being aware of your thoughts and judgments as you read. It’s also a matter of focus: keeping your full attention on the task at hand.

There are two important preconditions for success in reading. First, understand that quality reading, like most things worth having in life, takes a lot of work. Prepare to read and review an essay several times, following the steps outlined in this textbook. Second, know how to overcome the thoughts and beliefs that cause you to lose focus as you read. There are three kinds of thoughts that especially stand in your way.

1. Random Thoughts. Try a little experiment. Set a timer for one minute, and during that one minute, you have a simple task: Don’t think about anything. It sounds easy, but far from it. If you’re honest, you’ll quickly find your mind thinking of all sorts of things, no matter what the directions and your intentions were. You might think, for example:

· “Did I forget to mail in the utility bill as I left for college? I’d better have because they’re sure to turn off my lights if they don’t get that check!”

· “I wonder if Marcia is angry with me. She didn’t seem too friendly when we talked this morning on the way to class. Probably had to do with what happened last weekend.”

· “I feel really low energy today. I wonder if I’m coming down with something.”

· “I’d like to download that new CD from “Hands,” but I really can’t afford it.”

· “That writing assignment for my English class is going to take a lot of time, and I’ve got lots of work in other classes. I just don’t see how I’m going to get it all done.”

Jorge Cham – The Stanford Daily

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=94

In truth, our minds are continually putting out thoughts, sometimes important, sometimes trivial, often times random. It’s what our minds do – they are thought-making machines. We take these thoughts for granted, an important part of who we are, yet we’re usually not even aware we’re having them. And if we are aware of random thoughts, we tend to believe them – no questions asked. Yet, they just come and go, seemingly of their own accord, like a breeze that we feel when out for a walk. Our thoughts certainly do not ask our permission, any more than our lungs ask permission to breathe or our stomach asks permission to digest lunch!

Here’s an example:

Have you had any random thoughts during the time while reading this chapter? If so, don’t feel bad. Research shows that about 90% of students have random thoughts even when reading just a few pages of text!
Take a moment and try to remember one of the random thoughts you have had while reading this chapter and summarize it below.

Most times random thoughts are not a problem and can be helpful. If your mind reminds you of a job interview, it could make the difference in whether you arrive on time, and if your mind reminds you to dress well for the interview and prepare, it could make the difference in whether you get the job.

However, if you need to concentrate on something – like reading, for example – random thoughts get in the way. As long as you blindly follow your random thoughts, you’re not focusing on your reading, and if you’re not focused, you’re not learning.

How do we get rid of our mind’s random thoughts so that we can focus on the task at hand? You may think all you have to do is force the thoughts away, but it doesn’t work like that. The truth is you cannot force random thoughts to go away, like you force a tightly capped bottle to open with a bit of muscle power. Your mind doesn’t respond well to being forced. You have about the same chances for success as trying to force yourself to fall asleep. Give it a try sometime: You’re lying in bed awake, and you say to yourself: “In 10 seconds I’m going to fall asleep, like it or not!” See how well that command doesn’t work!

Is there any way to get rid of our mind’s random thoughts, or are we stuck with them like a bad hair day? The good news is there is a way to clear your mind of random thoughts. First, recognize the thought. The awareness brings the thought to your attention, and it’s your attention that will free your mind to refocus on reading. Second, gently let the thought go. Some people find it helpful to create a mental image of the thought (as a bird, a deer, or a cloud, for example), and as you let the thought go, in your mind’s eye, watch the bird, deer, or cloud fly, run, or drift away. The thought will also drift away. Third, bring your attention back to the reading.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that random thoughts are likely to return, so you’ll need to repeat the letting-go process many times during each college reading assignment. When this happens, don’t get discouraged or frustrated. All you need to do is repeat the letting-go process and bring your focus back to the reading. It’s really not a big deal, and it will make all the difference in your reading success. More good news: you’ll improve with practice, resulting in fewer random thoughts and more focused attention.

2. Prejudgment. The second barrier to success in reading is the tendency to judge or evaluate the essay or textbook (“This stuff is good or it’s bad, interesting or boring, worthwhile or worthless.”) The tendency to judge what you’re reading is even more challenging than random thoughts, because it’s so inviting. Before you are even aware of it, you’ve made a final judgment and stopped trying to understand. As with random thoughts, our minds are little judgment machines. We judge the cereal we had for breakfast; the traffic on the way to class; the guy who pulled into our intended parking space while we were getting ready to park; the outfit a student sitting across from us is wearing; the lecture on the civil rights movement of the 1950s given by our American History professor; and, of course, we tend to judge all things we read.

The problem is not in the judgment itself, but the rush to judge could get you into trouble. Once you make a judgment about something, you tend to turn off the part of your brain that helps understand it. In effect, judgment becomes a substitute for understanding. You relax, stop concentrating, and lose focus; after all, why work hard when you already “know” how worthwhile, or worthless, the object, the person, or the reading is.

The Far Side by Gary Larson

http://hubpages.com/hub/Gary-Larson

Judgment before understanding has negative consequences. It gets in the way of our relationships with individuals and ethnic or racial groups. Prejudgment applied to people and groups is called prejudice, which, when you think about it, is almost the same word with much the same meaning. If you’ve prejudged all people of a certain skin color as untrustworthy, you’ll not take the time or effort to understand that the student sitting across from you of that description is actually more trustworthy than any of your friends.

Prejudgment when applied to exercise, college, or work, for example, can lead to quitting as soon as things appear to be too hard or not enough fun. The next time you exercise monitor your thoughts and see how long it takes before you have a negative judgment: “This is no fun, I could be home playing video games.” In your rush to judgment, you do not think about twenty pounds you would have lost and the more robust health you would have gained by staying the course. In college, judgment before understanding can lead to dropping a course you need for a major because you don’t like all the homework the professor assigns, or even dropping out of college before getting a degree because “it’s just too boring.” The same rush to judgment happens in reading.

Here’s an example:

Have you have had a judgment during the time you’ve been reading this chapter? (“This chapter is too long or it’s too short, or too difficult or too easy,” or the all time favorite: “It’s boring*.”)
Take a moment and remember a judgment you’ve had during the time you’ve been reading this chapter and summarize it below:

*The word boring in today’s world of computers, the Internet, thousands of smart phone apps, iPads, video games, mass media, and multitasking, has become a substitute for prejudgment. As you think about the word boring, there’s something to be learned from what one of the greatest writers of all time, Gustave Flaubert, had to say on the subject: “You’re not interested in something? That’s because you haven’t paid enough attention.”

Negative judgments do not need to be about the reading to cause you to lose focus. The judgments have the same result if they are about any other part of the class, for example, the professor or other students. If you judge the class or your professor, you might feel superior, but it’s a false victory, because you’re taking away from your chances for success—you’re focused on your judgment and not understanding what it takes to succeed in class.

The way to overcome prejudgment as a barrier to effective reading, or for that matter in all aspects of life, is to use the same strategy as for eliminating random thoughts: First, recognize that you’ve made a judgment, second, gently let the judgment go, and third, bring your attention back to the reading. Your judgments will come back again, so be prepared to let your judgments go multiple times during each reading assignment. Recognize that even if you have a particular judgment multiple times, it does not make it true. It’s just your mind leading you away from the task at hand, like a singer drifting out of tune. You’ll get better with practice, resulting in fewer judgments and improved focus.

“Peanuts” by Charles Schulz

http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2011/12/23

3. Negative Self-Thoughts. The third barrier to successful reading is the most difficult of all. That’s because negative self-thoughts come from a place deep inside and from a time when we were pretty young. They are thoughts other people have put onto us, like weights that drag us down. It may have been our third grade teacher telling us: “You’ll never be a good reader. Look how slow you are and how you stumble over the words”; or another student in our fifth grade class saying: “What a loser you are!” “You’re ugly as sin!” “I bet you can’t even walk and chew gum at the same time!”; or when you were only three, one of your parents, saying, “You’re so stupid. You’ll never be good at anything!” People can be as cruel as they are mistaken Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher, had it right when he said: “It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.” At some level, we may understand that these people from our childhood didn’t know us or even know what they were talking about, but because we’ve taken these negative thoughts deep inside, we tend to believe them as truth.

Peanuts by Charles Schulz http://www.jokelibrary.net/nationalities/a_to_z/latin-peanuts.html

Trying to get through a difficult reading assignment, you may find yourself replaying these negative thoughts, and once again, believing them. You might find yourself thinking: “I’m not understanding any of this stuff because I’ve never been any good at reading and never will be! It’s better to give up now and cut my losses.”

Even though negative self-thoughts is the most difficult barrier standing in the way of reading success, and for that matter all things in life, the method you use to control these thoughts is the same as with random thoughts and negative judgments.

First / Recognize that you’ve had a negative self-thought.
Second / Gently let the negative self-thought go.
Third / Bring your attention back to the reading.

Negative self-thoughts have a way of coming back again, like the Zombies in the Invasion of the Not Quite Dead. You need to prepare to let them go again and again. No worries—it’s just something you need to do in order achieve success, like getting a part-time job to help pay for college, waking up an hour earlier to complete homework, or not partying all weekend to prepare for the exam on Monday.

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Letting go of random thoughts, judgments, and negative self-thoughts provides the fertile soil you’ll need for success in college reading.

Practice 1. Read the essay “The Humble Hound” by David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times. As you read, notice your thoughts, especially the three kinds of thoughts we covered in this chapter:

1. Random Thoughts. “I wish I had some coffee like the girl has at the table across the aisle. It sure looks good!” “I wonder if it’s going to rain because I need to walk to the bus after class.” “I’ve got to remember to call my mother this afternoon to see if I can borrow the car,” and on and on.

2. Judgments about people, events in your life, or the essay. “This essay [or just one idea in the essay] is good or bad, interesting or boring, worthwhile, or worthless,” and so on.

3. Negative self-thoughts. “I’m not understanding any of this stuff because I’ve never been any good at reading and never will be! It’s better to give up now and cut my losses.”

“Peanuts” by Charles Schulz

http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2011/12/27

1. As you have one of thoughts, use the following key to record that you had the thought in the right hand column (see below):