Oh teenage trauma. It can really have an amazingly long lasting effect. Fortunately for you I'm not about to delve into a some teenage sob story culminating with a gaggle of condescending girls laughing hysterically (or maybe you'd like that)... No, this is about something much nerdier.
I always had a hunch that I read slowly, but how could you know what slow is? My basis of comparison was my brother who whipped through Feynman's series as a pre-teen in weeks. But when Mrs. Muelbach in 10th grade had us read until she said stop, I had proof. She went around the room asking how many pages we read. 37, 45, 29, 48,18... 18? Had I really just admitted to the class that I should be classified as mentally retarded? Now I know that there may be some foul play as well as a bit of a heisenberg effect whereby everyone, knowing they were being watched, sped up. I had even skimmed a couple passages! Still only 18? No one laughed or snickered at me, but they were probably just shocked. (Only recently did I go back and calculate that the responses of even 35 would have been approaching 600 words per minute... damn liars!)
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2 comments:
Well it is a little silly commenting on a post that isn't even still on your main page - but due to some silliness on my part I just now read the post so here I go. Hopefully you have email notification or something so I'm not just writing for my own gradification. I think the post brings up a few interesting points.
First I'm sure that all of the guys in your class have now had more than 6 sexual partners while the girls will never have more than 3. But even more than that I think it is a pretty big mistake on the teacher's part to not then ask questions that reveal if they actually comprehended what they just read. I know that at times when I have wanted to appear to be a fast reader and did not care what I was reading I would just read the first sentence of each paragraph so I knew what it was about but only picked up a small amount of information (I think dad taught me that trick). So in addition to the kids lying sounds like the teacher was encouraging the wrong behavior.
Another point is I find it interesting when people associate things like books per week and reading rate (I'm not criticizing you saying it because I'd like to think that I am just a really fast reader) - since that's really one of two factors in the equation. That or being single significantly improves a person's reading ability.
Since you did two parts I'll continue my comment in two parts...
for some reason the thought of a mentally retarded eric signoff made me burst out laughing!
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