Studying as my Reading Breaks

In my last post, I said that I have been reading as my study breaks, but that is not exactly true. The truth is something more along the lines of studying during my reading breaks... and while I probably need to tone it down a little bit, I am having a grand old time.

The problem with reading being my vice is that unlike so many other vices, the recently cut out TV for example, it doesn't FEEL like a vice when I'm doing it. It's an intellectual activity, one with some level of educational and cultural value (depending on what you read I suppose). A love of books and reading is a trait that I would cultivate rather than squash in my children if ever I have any. (Imagine for a moment the financial disaster that could result form setting me loose in a bookstore with a little mini bibliophile with the same lust for full sets that I have... there are currently something well over 60 American Girl historical fiction books alone!)

The point being, I have trouble making myself feel guilty about reading, even when I am reading The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death when I should, instead, be reading my microanatomy syllabus. Blame my parents for all that relentless positive reinforcement, reading aloud to me and buying of books when I was a child. (You created a monster!) It still, as an adult, seems wrong to set a timer that beeps when I have to stop reading when the only beeping timers that I heard of as a child told my brother that he could. Not wanting to stop was not a problem for him, but I can assure you, it is a big problem for me.

Still, after overindulging a little, and knowing my personal tendency to binge read, I have pulled out the little purple timer bookmark that Andrew the Wonderful bought for me sometime ago, and started limiting myself to 1/2 hour or 45 minute stints...or at least trying to. I am trying to convince myself that while Saul Bellow's collected short stories will still be there for me to read when exams are over (although I may have to renew them from the library), I will not be able to reclaim the study time after the tests have passed.

And with that, I am off to study. After reading for half an hour, of course.