At around six pm last Sunday (or, what I’ve come to call my “get everything that relates to college done” day), I reached the final dredges of my nine-part writing supplement for Columbia University. Exhausted, I begged my swollen eyes to focus on the small digital words which asked me something unusual…

            “List the books read for pleasure that you enjoyed most in the last year”.

            Seriously? I mean, does this school actually expect that with my AP courses, job(s), running, and show season… seriously think that I’m spending my free time reading for fun?? Not to mention, who in the world makes their writing supplement NINE PARTS LONG!!? This isn’t the Commonapp Olympics, people. My fingers are sore as it is.

            After my temper tantrum, I realized that one doesn’t just meddle with Columbia, of all colleges, and I decided to suck it up and peruse my bookshelf to see if I could remember the last time I’d read something, and what exactly it was.

            I’m a binge reader, and I will confess openly to that. I absolutely love to read, make no mistake; as a matter of fact, I spent the first fourteen years of my life befriending novels rather than people. That’s a fact, although once I realized that, you know, friends were nice things to have, and that I didn’t want to be a book lady who read only to her cats for the rest of my life, I began to move outward. People are lovely, I would highly recommend getting to know one every once in a while.

            Anyway, when I do read, I can’t help but become entirely engrossed in the story to the point where I literally will finish the novel within a few hours. My latest record was reading Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs in less than two hours straight. I’m quite proud; somebody please call the Guinness Book and have me inducted.

            And naturally, having lived with an English professor my entire life, I favor the classics, and they’ve been readily available to me. While my eighth grade counterparts were reading Twilight and Pretty Little Liars, I was meandering my way through Chopin, Whitman, and Shakespeare….and for me that was just the way things were. Although, annoyingly, it’s given me a supremely elevated taste in literature; to the point where I avoid most contemporary lit entirely. I hope this doesn’t make me sound snobbish, but really, please don’t hate on me when I tell you I’m more comfortable with someone like Sylvia Plath, instead of, say, Anne Brashares (yeah, it is okay if you’re still reading the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, it’s a classic).

            So yes, if you haven’t caught on, I am basically an all-around geek for words, but lately, all I’ve been devouring in terms of literature has been my AP coursework. So, Columbia’s prompt made me mildly panic. And then choke on my coffee. And then gag as I choked on my coffee. And then…oh, well you get the point. But it also made me wonder if there is a correlation between reading just because you feel like it and getting better grades. I’ve personally noticed that when I stop reading for fun, I feel a lot less focused, believe it or not. It’s almost as if the pleasure reading works as well as a run, yoga, or meditation when it comes to bringing back my focus. And, I’ll tell you, if  I don’t have some space to myself on a weekly basis, I come pretty damn close to tearing out my hair.

            The bottom line is, it’s difficult with all of the demands put upon us as high-schoolers, and I understand that, but extra-curricular reading really does increase your chances of success. Personally, I’m all about the brain-power, as nerdy as that sounds, and so I’d seriously advise clocking away a few hours on that “get everything done day” to hang around with one of your favorite books (I recommend Divine Concepts of Physical Beauty by Michael Bracewell, for starters).

Reading for yourself and not a class will probably calm you down and be a nice break from all of the schoolwork. But if that isn’t cool enough, just remember it’ll be pretty stellar if you’re able to quote Jack Kerouac at cocktail parties a few years from now.