Slowing down as an immersive experience
Through my entire time as a student, I never used Cliffs Notes or SparkNotes in place of assigned reading. I made it a point to read every book I was supposed to, down to the last word. The trouble for me was that everyone else who resorted to these "study guides" knew enough about the real books to do well in their classes. From the perspective of efficiently using my time to reach the objective of a good-enough, basic understanding for writing essays, discussing the books in class, and impressing teachers, I lost out. I remember one book in particular. Crime and Punishment really broke a lot of people, many of whom were like me and had, up until then, insisted on reading the book and not the summary booklet. But I was determined. I was hellbent on savoring that book and milking it for all it was worth — calculus, biology, and economics be damned. As expected, I ended up with the same general recollection of the book's contents as the more reasonable folks who resort...