Find Relevance in What You Are Studying

What do you do in an English Literature class? You read books. Sometimes you just focus on one book, but I have even been in a class where we read ten books in one semester! (I thought that was a little ridiculous, but, oh well.) But each time a new book was started, I felt like I just dove right in, blindly, not knowing what I should actually look for. I had a few professors that would try to guide our (my classmates and I) reading in a way to help with that day’s discussion, but I always felt a little bit lost. I never knew exactly what to look for in my reading, and I felt like it impeded my learning. Not to sound dramatic or anything, it just was a little bit random sometimes.

Then I was introduced to a new way of reading by Dr. Gideon Burton. He showed me and my classmates an Algorithm for Reading a Book in theDigital Age, and we were required to do an assignment in this process. (You can find mine finished product of this algorithm here.)  I’ll be honest; at first I thought it was just busy work. I didn’t want to do it because I had actual reading to do for other classes, and I didn’t have time to jump through all of these hoops. But then after I finished and started reading the novel, I had an epiphany:

I actually had a purpose in reading the book.

That sounds dramatic again, and it was what the point of the assignment was anyway, but it was still fun to figure that out. As I read the novel, I focused on passages that would help with ideas that I was already thinking about, and I could find themes that I wanted to focus on for later projects.

This algorithm is what I propose as a way to study literature in the digital age. It doesn’t have to be exactly as Dr. Burton proposes already, but the idea of ingraining your study in an overarching theme is what can help students to go deeper in their learning. It also ties in with the idea of the tiered content model of writing and publishing, but it applies to learning and studying. When we find the backstory and discussions about a novel, we are getting a teaser, and then studying the topics that have already been explored surrounding the text give us a trailer. Then, finally, we can formally study the text.

Basically, we need to avoid just blindly going for it. We need to find the “why” in what we are studying. We need to be prepared for the end goal. The digital age allows this algorithm to work because of the social aspect of finding discussions that surround the novel, and this is how we can find our place in the conversation. Such is the goal of the English major: make a meaningful contribution to the conversation. Now, in the digital age, this is more than ever easily and meaningfully done.