Educational/Reading Autobiography

This essay was written around 1997 to serve as an example to share with students in English 105 at Loyola University of what type of essay I was asking them to write in their educational autobiography.  This continues to serve as an example for English 101 students at the University of Wisconsin-Marinette.  Writing the essay also served as an interesting experience for me as it made me, like the students in the class, examine why I read, how I view reading as part of my life, and how various reading experiences have influenced me. 

I have updated it a little bit, and I offer it here as, in part, an explanation of why I am in this field and why I enjoy teaching English.  I do not presume to offer new insights into reading itself and this is not meant to be an analytical essay, but rather a personal examination of my reading habits and changes.

Why I Read the Way I Do

When I was applying to Ph.D. programs in English I was most concerned with the statement of purpose essay required by all of the universities; according to everyone I spoke with, it was a crucial part of my application. One director warned me not to focus on how "I love to read," but instead to focus on specific goals I had in the field of literary criticism. I assumed that a love of reading would be an integral part of anyone who applied to such a program, for I cannot imagine anyone studying and teaching literature without loving to read, so the warning seemed logical. However, I sometimes feel like my graduate education interfered with my love of reading, which was the reason I chose this field, the reason I did not write about in my essay. Sometimes now I pick up a book and cannot read it without analyzing and critiquing structure, form, theme, language, and imagery. Did the pursuit of academic goals force me to set aside the enchantment of reading that originally led me to that pursuit?

My interest in reading began at such a young age that I cannot remember a time when it was not an integral part of who I am. Growing up, I always knew our house had been filled with books since long before I was born. I do not remember the specific books my parents read, but I know that their trips to the library were frequent. I do remember being read to from an early age, and always wanting more. I also remember my trips to the library and can recall vividly when I discovered for the first time some of my favorite authors. I can still see the exact shelf in the Winona Public Library where Jane Eyre stood, and I can hear the librarian and my mother suggesting I might like the book. I was 10 or 11 at the time, and had no idea what had just begun.

What had begun was my future, for literature would define much of the rest of my adolescence and early adulthood. It became a way of earning praise from teachers and a way of retreating from reality. By the time I entered my sophomore year of high school I had read many of the works by Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Tolstoy, and other writers of "big books" that I encountered in the library and on reading lists. I sought out books that filled two qualifications: they were thick and they were old. Book lists and teachers confirmed that these were the classics that one had to read to become educated. In addition to all assigned reading from school, I saw these works as the key to becoming "educated."

What did reading these books give me? First, I achieved a sense of accomplishment, something that has always been important to me. When I looked at a reading list I could literally cross out those authors I had read and digested. Second, I received praise from teachers, particularly from my sophomore English teacher, who would marvel at my reading history. Third, and perhaps most important, I received the joy from reading the books; I enjoyed each and every one of them. I stood, dejected, in front of the shelf of Jane Austen novels when I was about 13 or 14, in disbelief and despair that there were no more. I felt that the worlds she had opened up to me were closed forever.

For some reason I believed that once read I could not go back to these "classics." It was not that I did not see value in rereading; during high school and college I read most assigned books and textbooks twice. Nor was I unaware of the experience of getting something new out of a book each time I read it. I simply did not have the time. For assigned books and school textbooks I made the time. I saw it as part of the expectations of my classroom-based education that I would know thoroughly what I was asked to read. However, the education I was receiving outside of the classroom was driven by another force. I had thousands and thousands of books to read before I would consider myself "educated."

For every book I read there were ten others waiting on the shelves! For all the accomplishment I felt, there was always something prodding me to remember that there was so much more to do. I remember sitting on the porch at home in the summer reading faster and faster through Dickens’ Bleak House. I enjoyed it, but I also had a compulsion to finish it. I would, and to this day still do sometimes, count how many pages were in each chapter as I read it, carefully checking out of the corner of my eye as to how many pages remained while my eyes continued moving over the lines.

In high school, my desire to read as much as possible joined up with my desire to succeed academically. In my sophomore English class, the teacher had all the students read books and do book reviews. I chose Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, perhaps the largest and oldest- looking book I could find at the library, a hefty tome of well over 1000, small-type pages. (Interestingly, I have recently seen a resurgence of interest in the works of Undset, something that makes the Norwegian part of me feel quite proud.) Proudly, I carried the book to and from school and read it whenever I had time. It was a fascinating story, set in Norway, about a family and especially a young girl growing up in the family. The story held my interest, but time simply ran out. The teacher heartily agreed to my proposal: I would complete Book I of the novel for the review (approximately one third) and finish the rest later.

Indeed, I did finish it. In that case, my compulsion for completing texts worked in my favor, as it often did, because the books I was reading were incredibly well-written. However, there were times when it did not work in my favor. When I would encounter a book I did not enjoy, an internal battle ensued. My mom told me I did not have to finish every book I started, but that was a difficult lesson to learn. I was a college student before I was really able to put down a book I was not enjoying without feeling a sense of panic over both what I was missing and my apparent failure to read and understand a "classic" -- a book whose cover was filled with praise from authoritative sources like Book Review or T. S. Eliot.

I continued for a long time to believe in a set list of these "classics" that one had to read thoroughly to become educated. College changed this for me. Professors questioned literary canonical works and brought in new ones of which I had never heard. This made me question my belief that it was necessary to read certain works to become educated.

My early resistance to seeing education as more than just reading classics was connected to my resistance to seeing education as a process that continues throughout life. For many years, I saw education as a goal, something to be reached, and when I had obtained it I assumed I would be magically transformed. Only after reaching this point of perfect education would I be able to contribute to my field of study, either education or literary criticism.

My sister once explained her anxiety over ever making a mark in her field, which is mathematics. She explained that she felt she would need to know everything in a field like probability or statistics in order to make an advance from present knowledge. It is an overwhelming idea. For me it is the same idea as is presented in the BBC production of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. One of the characters, Casaubon, who is on a fruitless quest to write "The Key to all Mythologies," sits reading in a library in Rome. The camera leaves his solitary figure and pulls back. Row upon row of books stretch out and up as far as one can see. Casaubon looks up at what the viewer is watching and both feel the overwhelming weight of despair. How is one ever to become educated? How is one ever to finish reading all these important books?

I said to my sister during this discussion, what if instead of two dimensions, knowledge exists in three dimensions. What if you start with what one theoretician wrote, move to what another mathematician thought, and then speed off like a starship, into unexplored space. Rather than seeing all knowledge as lying in a straight line, where we must pass from A through Z in order to achieve something new, why not see knowledge in three dimensions where breaking new ground is branching off from someone else’s work into a new sector of space?

This was an important moment for me in my own reading career. Realizing I should take the advice I was giving her, I gradually changed the way I think of education. College allowed me to see the impossibility of ever reading all that has been written, or even what countless individuals throughout history have deemed "the best ever thought or said," or "the classics." Graduate school taught me that I cannot hope even to ever read all that has been written in and about a particular literary period. This led me to realize that education is not a place or a goal to be reached, but a never-ending process, and my opportunities to make a contribution are as infinite as I want them to be.

As I examine my reading history and see the difficulties I have faced, and sometimes created for myself, I know that I have enjoyed reading all my life and that this love has allowed me to become more educated, more aware, more open to new ideas, and more ready to accept that the more I understand, the more I will see how much there is that I do not understand. This is the paradox of education faced by all of us eventually. I believe there is, however, no similar paradox of reading. It is not true that the more I learn about literary criticism, the less I am capable of reading for pure pleasure. I still am able to enter a new world, one that becomes so much a part of me that turning the last page and closing the cover is painful.

Now, instead of worrying about how many books there are left to read in the world, I try to follow the models that in childhood taught me to value the act of learning.  Now when I think of reading, I think of my mom. She used to tell us about how when she was growing up she would be reading somewhere and be so engrossed that her mother would call her to set the table, or her sisters would call her to come into the other room, and she literally would not hear them. I picture my mother now in her favorite chair in the living room, TV on but ignored, and the omnipresent book in her hands. The lesson I continue to learn from my mother is the knowledge that reading is fun, addictive, and engrossing.

Now when I think of reading, I think of my father. There are shelves and shelves of books throughout my parents’ home, all filled with books on wide-ranging subjects from computers to music history, from contemporary fiction to contemporary Christian feminism. Many of these books have markers stuck throughout them and passages highlighted. The lesson I continue to learn from my father is the knowledge that education comes not from finishing books, but from reading them, actively and continuously. The image of these bookshelves also constantly reminds me that it is all right to begin a book, take from it what I can at that moment, and put it aside.

Now when I think of reading, I think of my sister. For years she did not read as much as I did, partly because her field, mathematics, called for a discipline of a different kind. Now, finished with her own graduate work, she finds the time to rediscover her interest. Her bookshelves are as eclectic as any in my family.  She reads Sherlock Holmes stories, Star Wars books, fiction old and new, mysteries, biographies of presidents and first ladies, histories of astronomy, and a variety of books in the field of mathematics. The lesson I continue to learn from my sister is the knowledge that it is never too late to rediscover the joy of reading.

I know that I have not lost the ability to read for enjoyment, nor have I lost my love of reading. It has, undoubtedly, changed. I cannot deny that I am not the same person I was at age 11, reading Jane Eyre for the first time. I bring different ideas and experiences to the book now than I did then. However, that does not mean I do not get pulled into the worlds that authors create.