Is there any room for a slow reader?

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>I really like reading, and I'm fairly amenable to writing -- especially technical, logical stuff.</p>

<p>This semester, as a college freshman, I was eager to learn, which entails a lot of reading. I'm a little OCD in that whatever reading material I pursue, I can only progress slowly and thoroughly. There's no skimming, no highlighting, no Sparknotes. I give everything a straight read, never proceeding until I have comprehended up to a certain degree of nuance. </p>

<p>Consequently, I am slow and steady; I perform very well on standardized reading comprehension tests. However, I noticed that I can never compete with the sheer volume that other students are capable of processing.</p>

<p>I tested myself, and my reading speed is exactly average: ~250 words per minute. Previously, my reading speed was always fine in relation to the average average of a noncompetitive public high school. My experiences in college, where almost everyone is above average in this rather fundamental marker of academic performance, have been disheartening.</p>

<p>Sure, reading speed, like most other abilities, ought to lie on a bell curve. There's nothing wrong with being normal-average, or, in other words, in the bottom decile or so at an elite college, right? But wait, the deviations in this trait are astounding. It is not uncommon for me to find real, living, breathing people who can read ~1000 wpm with excellent comprehension, and this is truly no strain for them. Maybe I could assure myself that my logic capabilities or excellent memory could compensate if reading speed is distributed like height, for example, where the tallest groups are never more than a few dozen percentage points taller than the shortest groups. But 300% is too much. </p>

<p>Reviewing my academic progress and imagining the advantages of compressing my time expenditures by three fourths, I wonder whether it would still be wise to pursue a law degree in the future. I think I'll get into law school, but if law really is just reading a lot of documents, is it worth it to grind my way through a career where people are inherently capable of quadrupling my output?</p>

2

<p>ee33ee, I have this problem too (and I'm a HS senior)! I read everything and understand it, but it takes me, maybe, 3x as long as everybody else. I've found I can read fast enough (at least, about as fast as my IB classmates) when I really push myself (such as during the SATs, where I barely finished the CR sections in time, but still pulled off a somewhat respectable score because I understood everything I read). I've thought about law school, but I've already started to struggle in higher level History classes (such as APUSH) in HIGH SCHOOL because I just can't read that much that fast. </p>

<p>I'm interested in this topic. Really I'd like some advice on how I could read more quickly while understanding everything.</p>

3

<p>Have you tried taking a speed reading course? I've known people who swear by them.</p>

4

<p>I would do everything possible to improve your reading speed without sacrificing comprehension. You can do fine in law school if you aren't a speed reader, but you will spend LOTS more time doing the necessary reading. Law school is all about reading.</p>

5

<p>Okay, so there are actually two topics that can sprout from this thread.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Improve my reading speed. I've looked into it, but the deeper I dig the more it seems like a big scam. 95% of speed reading programs are positively hokey, all about the "secret, infinite powers of the brain, where you can do whatever your mind can conceive". The rest sort of equivocate about some very basic issues, like the role of subvocalization. For the one book I finished, I gained a temporary boost, but I retained none of it a few days later. I suspect that the increase in speed was due to my conscious pushing, which is obviously not sustainable. If anyone here has substantial experience with speed reading, I'd love to hear it! In the meantime, I'm not hopeful. On a Weschler test I took a while back (for a separate issue), I scored considerably above average in every area -- except for processing speed, in which I scored over 2 standard deviations below everything else. Turns out, processing speed accounts for reading speed (and thinking on your feet, and other issues I guess..).</p></li>
<li><p>Given my current reading speed, what are my prospects? Is there a niche for those who aren't fast, but are very deliberate and meticulous? Like super-technical fine-print law? Heh.. Anyways, what are the reading speeds of you or any lawyers you know? If you don't know the actual speed, how long would it take them to complete a 250 page literary classic? It would take me a whole day. I know it can be done in around 2 hours. It seems like the funnel leading to -lawyer- becomes progressively tougher on slow readers. Perhaps natural selection will deal with me in law school, where the big jump comes, but maybe I'll take control and weed myself out, eh?</p></li>
</ol>

6

<p>My kid had a friend who had this problem. He enrolled in a regular reading course at one of those Sylvan learning centers the summer between junior and senior year in high school. It wasn't a speed reading course. It wasn't designed to make him read 1,000 words a minute. He actually was a slow reader--much worse than the OP. It really helped. </p>

<p>I don't know anyone else who has every taken such a course, but for this kid, Sylvan really worked. He didn't go to law school, but he did go to college and fuund that he could read material much more quickly than in high school. Studied less and got better grades--more importantly, he enjoyed it more.</p>

7

<p>If at all possible, try to write small notes on the margins so that if you need to come back to a certain section, you know what it's about without having to re-read the entire essay again.</p>

8

<p>You'll get screen out by the LSAT most likely.</p>

9

<p><200 wpm and at a T10, 1570 SAT and 170 LSAT. no reading required if you know how to play with the tests.</p>

<p>we'll see how i ended up on exams, as i mightily struggled through reading the cases, let alone supplements and stuff
but getting there, it's not a problem.</p>

10

<p>Yeah. I don't think I have a developmental reading disorder that requires Sylvan. I also don't need to make margin notes because what I'm best at is recall.</p>

<p>km7hill: I can see myself like you. 2330 SAT with no prep and felt like I had plenty of time on the writing/reading. Tell me more about yourself!</p>