Guess what? I found this IN THE GARBAGE! I mean, my basement.

This was in one of my classrooms several months ago. I took it home intending to blog about it. And it ended up in my basement, sadly unblogged. Until now, that is.

I took the quiz. As you can see, the only question I answered "no" to is "wanting to make better grades." (It's a bit ironic, I think, that this advertisement for improving one's literacy is itself not exactly well written. "Wanting to make better grades"? That sounds like a Facebook status when you're too lazy to delete the "is." Come on.)

I guess I have inefficient reading habits. Mostly because I don't pay attention a lot of the time. I try to read Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (which is, by the way, the most awesome name ever) while surfing Facebook. I try to breeze through Dante during my Econ class. But I seriously doubt this seminar would have helped me. I read faster than anyone I know.



Let's look at those laudatory quotes.

Says a senior accounting major: "I learned more about improving my reading in this one hour, than in my entire educational history." Really? This improved your reading more than your going through all of elementary school? Where you actually became literate? And you still can't put a comma in the right place?

Says Terry Clancy, an Aerospace Engineering major: "My semester GPA increased from a 1.97 to a 3.28. Thank you for helping me." What is he doing as an engineer that requires strong reading skills? It's not like he's reading Joyce or Derrida. Reading mathematical equations isn't that hard.

I did not know that eating before an exam can be detrimental to my score. I guess I'd better stop eating, lest I have to take any tests in the future. Nor did I know that studying for more than an hour at a stretch lowers my retention. Then again, I don't think I could stand an hour of solid studying. I take breaks about that often. And highlighting and underlining are not the best ways to study. That doesn't mean they're horrible. They're often better than just plain reading.

Okay, this has stopped being funny, even to me. So I'm going to stop writing.