Reading While Tired

Warning: reading while tired is proven to be a dangerously ineffective way to study. Reading while tired can lead to confusion, bookmark stasis, facial bruising, and paper cuts on your eyebrow. The following essay is a re-enactment showing what might happen if you try to read while tired. It is designed to scare you into going to bed early. Please do not try this at home.

Sometimes you need to triage your homework, because there is just so much of it. On those nights you might choose to do your reading homework last, because there is nothing you have to write down, and therefore it seems easier than the other stuff. This seems like a good idea until you find your eyes going over the same this seems like a good idea until you find your eyes this seems like a good idea until you find your eyes find your eyes find your eyes going over over over over over the same sentence over and over again. Phew.

On these evenings what should be an easy assignment—read one chapter of a book—becomes an epic struggle worthy of Greek myth. Maybe you can’t even remember any Greek myths, because you were tired when you read them.

You go through the motions of reading your book, but nothing seems to stick. Maybe you even get through an entire page and are ready to flip, victoriously, to the next, only to realize that you have no idea what you just read. You scan up the page and don’t seem to recognize any of the words. You go back to the beginning of the page, trying to jog your memory…

Sometimes you need to triage your homework, because there is just so much of it. On those nights you might choose to do your reading homework last, because there is nothing you have to….

And then, to your horror, you may even realize you have no idea what THAT paragraph even means. You have to go back farther than that:

The following essay is a re-enactment showing what might happen if you try to read while tired. It is designed to scare you into going to bed early.

But wait, what happened before THAT?

This just keeps getting worse. You know you’re supposed to read books from left to right, but now you seem to be going backwards. The page numbers are actually getting smaller. It’s like you’re in some sort of a weird twilight zone where the longer you study, the less you know, and yes, wise persons say that life is like that, but this is supposed to happen later, like when you’re 80. And you thought that saying was more of a metaphor, not something that happened literally, when you’re in your teens and just trying to read a chapter of a book, Good God Why Can’t You Just Read One Chapter Of A Book!!!!! Just One Chapter What Is Wrong With You!!!!! Wake! Up! And! Read! The! Book! And now where were you?

Reading while tired can lead to confusion, bookmark stasis, facial bruising, and paper cuts on your eyebrow. The following essay is a re-enactment showing what

Oh my God that doesn’t sound familiar either. Page back.

Warning: reading while tired is proven to be a dangerously ineffective way to study. Reading while tired can lead to confusion, bookmark stasis, facial bruising, and

Not ringing a bell! Go back!

Reading While—

(THUMP)

That thump you just heard was the sound of a student’s head landing on the book he or she was trying to read. As a result, this student has now suffered bruising to the face and paper cuts to the eyebrow, not to mention the humiliation of having failed to read even one page of the assigned reading. In fact, this student was so tired that he or she has actually un-read previously read material, and by the act of trying to get something done, has fallen farther behind.

Please don’t let this happen to you. If you feel tired and unsure of your ability to continue studying, go to sleep immediately and do not resume studying until you wake up.

This message brought to you by the SparkLife Department of Study Safety.

Related post: How Fast Do You Read?