Burning Books and Burnout

This weekend, something amazing happened to me. It was a totally unexpected and very much welcomed experience. It was, dare I say it, magical.

For the first time in at least 4 years, I stayed up late reading because I could not put the book down. I was enjoying it so much that I didn't want to stop until I could barely keep my eyelids from snapping shut. And when I dreamed, I dreamed about that book.

It's been a while since I've read for pleasure. Unfortunately, the way that education works today, at least in classes about literature, goes like this: you are told to read a book, you read the book, and then you spend several weeks dissecting every aspect of the book until it is a shell of its former self, barely recognizable, not unlike dissecting a frog or a fetal pig in biology. Only sadder, because maybe you liked the frog before you had to tear it up and inspect its insides with a magnifying glass while your teacher told you what you should be seeing.

Don't get me wrong: I love English Lit classes. I really did. But I'd be lying if I said that taking advanced English classes in high school and college didn't impact the way that I perceive the idea of "reading for pleasure."

In AP English senior year of high school, we read a lot of books, short stories, and poems. Some of them were actually really great books. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Of Mice and Men and All the King's Men and Medea. Of course, I enjoyed Hamlet and Macbeth, two of my favorite Shakespeare plays even to this day. But there were many books we read that I absolutely, 1000% did not enjoy. On the top of that list sits Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Heart of Darkness is a brilliant story that parallels delving into the human psyche with travelling deep into uncolonized Africa. I grew to hate that book. I grew to hate it so very much. We talked about it all semester long. Every single time we finished writing an essay and thought, "Ok, great, NOW we get to move on to something else," our teacher would hand out a new book, tell us to read it, and then write an essay comparing it to Heart of Darkness.

There was much darkness in the hearts of the students on those days.

But I'm getting beside the point.

Because even in high school, in the middle of the painful analysis and over-analysis and hyper-analysis of these books, I still had time to read what I wanted to read. And I did. And it sort of balanced things out. For every book we discussed in school, I was reading two or three others that I didn't have to write papers on, but could instead just enjoy.

That all stopped when I went to college.

The first two years that I was at UNC, I straight up didn't have time to read for pleasure. I was still adjusting to the workload, the pressure, the classes, etc. But I was still reading during the summers.

Then I declared my English major, and any desire to read anything that didn't have a grade riding on it went out the window. All I did was read. All the time. There was one semester when I had 23 books. 23 novels. Most students get 5 or 6 books for school, and I had 23. I was taking lots of English classes and reading lots of books and analyzing lots of plots, and I could not bring myself to read anything else that was more than a blog post or a Facebook status or a tweet.

Of course, each of these teachers thought that their class was the most important and didn't consider that there might be a student taking 4 English classes in the same semester who had 200 pages of reading for each of those other classes due in addition to their own. Short stories and plays and classic novels and memoirs and "Shakespeare and his Contemporaries" and "Medieval Literature, Chaucer to Pope," and "Southern Women Writers," and "The Great American Novel," and "Play Analysis," and so many others. I did, of course, supplement these heavily literature-based classes with classes more focused on digital literacy. The DL classes also had a lot of reading, but less analysis and fewer papers.

Because of these English classes, and by extension the other classes I took at UNC, I lost any desire to look at words outside of school, even over the summer. Reading felt like work, like school, like a chore. I straight up didn't want to do it.

And that's sad. I love reading. I really do. I love stories. I love character development. I love finding another world in the pages of a book and losing yourself there for days at a time. I love when someone else's words work their way into my head so that even when I'm sleeping, they're there, floating around.

I was a voracious reader as a younger student. I tore through books. I stayed up late into the night reading. I have fond memories of my parents reading the Harry Potter series to my brother and me on the bed when we were younger, doing all the accents. I really, truly loved to read. And I lost that over the course of 4 years.

I still loved books, but I couldn't bring myself to enjoy them anymore.

People frown on burning books, but why don't they frown on students burning out on reading?

There is a happy ending to this somewhat depressing post, and that is this: for the first time in 4 years, I am reading for pleasure again. And I am absolutely loving it. Working at a public library, with books, and book-lovers, in my face all day, it would be nearly impossible not to.

I started out by reading the first in George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series, because I'm a fan of the show. I was fully expecting it to be a thick and troublesome read, not unlike the Lord of the Rings series (or at least The Hobbit). To my delight, I found the book incredibly easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to get sucked into. I took my time reading it (I am certainly slower than I once was), but I loved it.

The next two books I read were random things I pulled off of the shelves while I was waiting for holds to come in, and I enjoyed them, too, quite a bit.

Then I started reading Ender's Game. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card has been on my list of books to read for years. It's a sci-fi classic, a Hugo award winner, and was recently turned into a movie (which I haven't seen-I went into the book totally blind). I tore through this book in approximately 48 hours. I was up until 2:30 am the first night I had it because I just couldn't put it down. I lost myself in the pages, in the story, and only came up for air to go to the bathroom, get water, or shift reading-positions.

I can't say for sure if my adoration of this book has to do with the fact that it's been so long since I really enjoyed a book as much as this one, but, to be honest, I don't really care. It was enjoyable and brilliant and gave me a feeling of open-minded wonderment that I haven't felt in a long time. Sure, it's thrown off my sleep schedule, but I'm OK with that.

I currently have three books to hold me over during Christmas Break, and my rate over last few weeks is anything to go by, I may just have to pick up some more when I'm back in North Carolina.

The point of this post wasn't to bash the education system-it's thanks to all of the classes that I took and all of that analyzing that I have such a passion for words. And that can be traced all the way back to elementary school. My English classes built me up. My teachers gave me the skills to understand language, to string an intelligent sentence together, to look beyond words and find meaning where it might be overlooked. The sheer volume of it all may have turned me off to reading for a while, but I found my way back, as I always knew I would. Words are a part of me, and I know that I won't be satisfied if I'm only ever looking at the words that I write myself.

This post came together because, despite what I just said, I wanted to write something with the words and skills that I've developed thanks to years of personal and guided reading. They're two sides of the same page: if you don't read both sides, you're missing out. Now that I'm turning pages again, you can rest assured that those skills will keep developing with even more instruction, even more practice, and, of course, even more reading for pleasure.

Manipulating Kids

Annie's Log, 12/8/15:

It's shocking how easy it is to manipulate kids. I realize that that's kind of a worrisome phrase, but I'm prepared to elaborate quite a bit, so bear with me.

Every real job I've ever had has involved me working directly with kids. I was a referee for U12 soccer for a little while in high school. I worked at a daycare when I was 18 with kids aged 1 to 3. And I have worked as a camp counselor for many, many kids in different types of camps. Now, I work at a public library, and deal with kids every time I go into work I see kids running around in the children's area. Even though I'm not directly working with the kids (I stand behind a desk that's too tall for most of them to see over), I still interact with them quite a bit.

On Saturday, I saw a LOT of kids. You see, SANTA was coming to do musical storytime. Yes, THE Santa Claus. And let me tell you, some of the kids were PUMPED.

There was more happening at the library, though: there was a massive book sale in the very intimidating basement (it's giant and dark and scares me a little bit), a few different holiday workshops where people came in to make Christmas gifts, and, more relevant to this story, a bake sale.

The bake sale was set up right next to the front doors so it was the first thing you saw when you walked in. Three tables covered in homemade cookies and cupcakes and pies and stuff, all decorated festively and sold to benefit the library.

So we had a bunch of kids who were super excited to see Santa, who HAD to walk past a table full of sweet stuff. Can you see where this is going?

I'd say that on Saturday, at least half of the sales at at the bake sale were thanks to kids begging their parents to buy them something either on the way to or on the way from seeing Santa. And you know that wasn't an accident. The bake sale tables were totally set up so that there was no way to avoid it.

Sure, this was standard practice meant to get people of all ages to buy stuff, but, by God, it worked on every single kid who walked through those doors on Saturday. Good Lord, they all wanted stuff. Their eyes got as big as saucers and it was all we could do to keep them from actively grabbing and shoving things into their mouths.

And most of the parents bought stuff for their kids. Because it's one thing when your child wants a candy bar in the checkout line at the grocery store, but it's completely different when there's a table at child eye-level covered in festive treats like the kind that we make for Santa, and buying those treats gives money to the library.

So the kids were easy to manipulate with the candy and stuff.

But there was also Santa.

I heard so many parents threaten so many kids who were crazy excited to see Santa and so were bouncing off the walls and not really behaving with NOT getting to see Santa. And it worked on just about every kid. Because Santa is worth keeping your hands to yourself and not pulling stuff off the shelves and not hitting your sister and whatever.

Boom.

As an aside, it was incredibly stressful for ME to be expecting Santa at the library. I was told by my boss (in whispers, so that no one would overhear), that Santa was coming soon, and that I should come get her when he walked in so that she could take him to the back where he could get ready and could keep out of sight and stuff. The problem was, I didn't actually know when he was coming.

So I work at a public library. Public libraries are pretty popular with older, retired citizens who spend a lot of time reading and watching movies and getting help with their technology. That means that there is a pretty constant influx of older gentlemen at the library. Many of them are somewhat portly. Many of them have beards.

Do you see the problem here? My coworker and I were told that Santa was coming, but we didn't know which Santa-looking guy was supposed to play Santa. There were at least 6 men who came in who could have been Santa. And we couldn't ask them if they were here to be Santa. Because, geez, imagine asking some guy who came in to pick up his wife's books, "Excuse me, are you Santa? Yes, I'm serious. No? Ok, no, wait, please don't report me to my boss..."

Anyway, kids were easy to manipulate thanks to the jolly elf man who breaks into our homes to bring us stuff when it's cold outside.

And now we come to my role in all of this. I don't work directly with the kids anymore, but I do have one thing behind my very tall desk that allows me to express complete control over them.

Stickers.

I have stickers that I can use to bend children to my will.

Wait, that sounds bad.

What I mean is that kids will do anything for a sticker. There was one mother who was checking out about forty picture books for her rambunctious toddler. This little girl, Nadia, would not stay still. She ran all over the place while the mom was trying to deal with the books and her child and her ringing cell phone. At one point, Nadia actually made it all the way to the parking lot (I couldn't see the small child because I was behind the desk or I would have said something).

After being retrieved from the parking lot, I offered Nadia's mother what little help I could: I asked if a sticker would motivate her to stay in one place.

And wouldn't'cha know it: it did. The prospect of getting a sticker kept this hyperactive toddler in one place when threats and pleading and stern reprimands wouldn't.

Kids are easy to manipulate with stickers.

Of course, the same could be said for me. Or my dad. Or any number of people who like stickers. But with kids its something completely different. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the job-handing out stickers, that is. It's nice, and I don't usually have to use stickers to manipulate them.

But I guess it's nice to have in my arsenal.

End log.

Useless Superheroes

Annie's Log, 12/01/15

To make up for the fact that I haven't written a post in a while (life gets in the way sometimes, and so does driving to Florida), I've decided to post a stupid list I put together a while ago for a friend of mine.

She texted me "HELP ME COME UP WITH A USELESS SUPERHERO" and I cannot tell you how happy I cam that I am the first person she turned to with this problem. My response, immediately, was "WHAT PARAMETERS DO YOU NEED i LIVE FOR THIS KIND OF THING."

With "literally no parameters," I came up with the following list of (completely made-up (by me)) superheroes. Enjoy:

• Doctor Pepper: uses pepper spray and other spicy things to incapacitate his/her enemies-only weakness is milk
• This one was deemed too useful. Use that to tell you just how dumb this list is about to get.
• The Dust Buster: beats people with his Swiffer of Justice. Weakness is window cleaning spray.
• Professor Paranoid: self-explanatory.
• The Snail: protected by a shell, he is capable of excreting a goo to stop his enemies (very, very slowly)
• I was literally looking around my apartment for random objects for inspiration
• Corporal Planet: a suckier version of Captain Planet
• Unfortunately, my young friend was in need of an idea for her high school Spanish project and had never heard of Captain Planet. I told her to YouTube it and moved on
• Band-Aid Girl: capable of fixing small, mildly annoying problems. If you have anything serious, go to Hospital Woman.
• The Blister: rubs enemies the wrong way.
• Dr. Gum: stops evil-doers with gum on their shoes.
• The Time Traveler: capable of moving forward in time, only at a normal pace.
• The Match: Burns brightly for justice, but only for a short period of time, provided it's not windy outside.
• Potato Man: Brings starchy justice to criminals in the form of his Masher of Might.
• The Ventriloquist: he doesn't do a whole lot, but his dummy kicks ass.
• The Eye Doctor: not super effective, but he does dilate villains' pupils, which is a mild inconvenience.
• Battery Man: very powerful for, like, 30 minutes but as soon as he gets below 40% he panics and has to find an outlet.
• Similarly, Sprint: very strong, but only for a maximum of, like, 100 meters.
• Hiccup Man: has the power to inflict hiccups on his enemies, so long as they don't drink a glass of water or hold their breath.
• Songbird: all she does is sing at people. No powers, just Top 40 hits.

I may or may not end up doing something with this list. Rest assured, however, that I won't plan on donning a cape and turning into one of these "heroes." I'm good at coming up with stupid heroes, but I'm not stupid myself.

End Log.