Reading and Complaining Go Hand in Hand With Heavy Syllabi

Though many come to Columbia to hit the books, by the time midterms roll around, a number are ready to hit their heads against a wall.

“This is how much reading I have. I have so much reading that I run out my print quota for one lecture,” said Veronica Hylton, CC ’12, who added later, “Completely honestly, I don’t give a shit about French tax structure in the 1920s.”

Yet despite the din of complaints that fills Butler’s hallways, students and professors generally agree that while readings can often be dense, “it’s important in college to read and it’s important to learn how to read,” as Lorraine Minnite, Barnard assistant professor of political science said.

Addressing concerns about reading-intensive courses such as political science, history, and English, professors insist that students should develop their ability to filter out important concepts in the texts. “It means that students have to learn how to read that material and they have to develop strategies for how to tackle the ideas,” Minnite explained.

Still, said Columbia Professor of political science Nadia Urbinati, the volume of reading all depends on the content. “Sometimes the reading is so narrative, sometimes it’s very dense and it’s expected of them to read less,” she noted.

Though many, like Hylton, bemoan their overwhelming amounts of reading, others acknowledge that there may be a positive side to doing their homework.

“I became a faster reader since I came here and I know how to pick out what the important things are,” Nicole Donnachie, BC ’09, said.

“I’m in a political science colloquium called Social Movements and it’s really reading-intensive,” Maggie Herman, BC ’11 said, adding that as a transfer student, she was “looking for a challenge, a more intense academic experience.”

Yet perhaps, Urbinati suggested, students may be digging their own academic graves by burying themselves under piles of books. “Students tend to take too many courses in a semester. For this reason, there is a kind of sense of being overwhelmed by readings,” she said.

But Minnite admitted that professors sometimes think only of their own classes, and lose track of how their assignments heap on top of a full schedule. “You can get up in your class and forget that students need to take three or four other courses,” she said.

Ultimately, Herman said, students can avoid stress and confusion once they learn how to tackle the material effectively. “Sometimes it can be incredibly overwhelming and really time-consuming but the reading itself is not entirely hard to do. It’s dense but easy to understand once you put in the time to actually read it,” she noted.