How to suck the fun out of reading

Nothing sucks the joy out of reading like knowing you’re going to be tested on it.

After eight months of university, it’s really bizarre to not be on a strict reading schedule. I’m still in shock. No more textbooks. No more readings.

University is so super condensed that every moment has to be planned. And most of it’s spent reading. Every possible second that could be used reading textbooks has to be squeezed out of each day.

Forget reading for fun. You eventually forget what ‘fiction’ is.

But a lot of what you’re reading is actually really interesting. Like how when oxygen is broken down by your body, the byproducts can actually damage your cells. Or when a queen clownfish dies, the largest male of the school of clownfish will change it’s gender and become female. You’re just so caught up in trying to keep up with the readings, or trying eat the textbook for future regurgitation on a test, that you can’t appreciate it.

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I’ve been off school for a month now, but I still have moments of dread, thinking there must be some health article or physics chapter that I should be reading.

Even after four weeks, it still seems like a foreign concept. Reading. For fun.

I’m still getting used to it.