lack of intellectual discipline

College Life
1

<p>I have come to understand a number of problems I that I have encountered when reading history AND literature.</p>

<p>I lack the ability to read intensively. When I read literature and history, I cannot visualize it. I don't seem to engage actively in the historical narrative. I can't visualize the geographical places, and I can't read a work of literature for very long without becoming bored to death.</p>

<p>I read a passage during a practice SAT about changing literacy patterns in the modern era with the advent of the internet. Because there is so much information available at our disposal, all of it becomes overwhelming and seldom do we humans have the patience or the psychological discipline to read a work of scholarly merit without getting irritated at the lengthy passages that lack academic utility.</p>

<p>This is my problem. I always instantly go to Wikipedia for all my answers to life's questions. I have come to realize that, unless I withdraw from the desire to knowledge as it is factually, without the deep meaning and connotation, I will always lack the intellectual discipline that is required to understand the full gyst of an author's argument and will never be able to settle with a valuable resource.</p>

<p>I find myself desiring beefy books of any kind of academic classification; from economics to physics and from Japanese to sociology, and will spend hours looking for a book in a library that meets my temporary criteria, yet I seem to not have the patience to even read more than ten minutes of each particular work.</p>

<p>I have found a word to accurately describe myself: A dilettante. It's a person with amateurish characteristics that has frivolous interest in various disciplines.</p>

<p>Does anyone else struggle with the same problem?</p>

2

<p>There was an article in Atlatnic Monthly about a month ago about how Google changed the way we read things.</p>

<p>Basic solution: Get off the Internet, Wikipedia for quick answers. You can tell use the INternet but find longer, more in-depth articles to read. Spend time with books. Eventually, your stamina will come back.</p>

<p>It’s not about being intellectual, it’s about holding your attention on a particular subject matter.</p>

3

<p>If you find something interesting on Wikipedia, you should go ahead and click on the actual source links for that information; they’ll usually point you to something with considerable more depth. You can always then look up the book or publication where they got the material. </p>

<p>It doesn’t have to be in some dusty, ancient tome in the forgotten parts of the library to be intellectually intensive.</p>

4

<p>Yes. Internet or no internet, I’ll always find some way to space out or procrastinate while reading. I’m currently dealing with it though. I just need to make a schedule to accomodate for the ADD.</p>