Hi All! My name is Loquacious… Er, Lily!

Hello people of the internet! My name is Lillian Butzow, however I prefer to be called Lily. I am currently a senior at Chico State University studying English. In addition, I have accepted a seat at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, the capitol of our great state of California. For many years, since my Gifted and Talented Education program covered criminal procedure and forensics in the fifth grade, I have maintained an interest in law. When I reached middle school and high school, I excelled in my English classes, and grew to love literature. From this point on, I was conflicted. I no longer had continuing education in law, forensics, or any other form of the criminal justice system. I was exposed every day to new literature, new ways to read and to learn from what I was reading. I began to let law fall by the wayside. During high school, I was finally allowed into English classes that challenged me; I was presented with new genres and authors of which I could never have dreamed. From that point on, I started to consider the fact that English, and most probably education, were my future. When I graduated high school, I had a plan for myself. I didn’t quite know what I was going to do after undergraduate education, but I was attending an institution where I could chase my dream; I was going to study Shakespeare in the home town of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. As any reader may be able to figure out, that did not end up working the way that I planned. After only one quarter, I ended up in a situation that saw me moving home. I attended my local community college, and after graduating, I came to Chico State. At my transfer student orientation, I met a wonderful professor who told me about the English Education major available here. So, when I began my career here at Chico State I was on track to becoming an English teacher. Somewhere along the way, I realized that as much as I love literature, my heart wasn’t into teaching for the right reasons. I decided somewhere during the spring semester last year that I was going to return to my other passion. In a span of a few months, I took the LSAT, scouted schools, and while living in Italy on study abroad, I applied to, and was accepted by multiple law schools.  This is who I am. A core part of both of these passions is the integral aspect of reading.

Now, reading in school, whether in law, English, history, or any other subject is slightly different than when you pick up a book that you’ve been waiting to have delivered, or that book that you bought at the bookstore that you’ve been waiting to crack open. Circumstances surrounding your reading are important, but not as important as how you, the person who will be absorbing the material, approach the text. As a person who does or does not identify as a “reader”, you have a definition of what that means. I personally identify as a reader. What that means, to me is someone who not only has the ability to read, which is literacy, but someone who enjoys reading and truly tries to understand what they are reading, regardless of why they are reading it. Personally, I read in similar ways academically and for pleasure, with some key differences. One of the main similarities is that when I begin reading something, regardless of reason, I tend to forget that anything else exists. I tackle every text voraciously, sometimes forgetting to eat, in an attempt to finish said text in one sitting. The largest key difference for me is that when I am reading for academic purposes, while I am attempting to enjoy and learn from what I am reading, I tend not to be able to finish an entire book in one day. Often my reading academically and my reading outside of school intersect in some ways. As an English major, and a lover of classic novels, many of my classes have seen me re-reading books that I have loved for years. In addition, I read scholarly articles that relate to either topics in these beloved novels, or even relate directly to them. Unfortunately, the nature of being a student is that there will inevitably be texts that do not interest you, do not relate to texts you have experience with, or are simply too dense to understand easily. Luckily, there are scholars who understand this problem, and they attempt to explain the dichotomy of academic versus recreational reading.

Bronwyn T. Williams is one such scholar. In Williams’ piece entitled “‘A puzzle to the rest of us’: Who is a ‘reader’ anyway?”, the notion of a reader, and especially a good reader, is discussed. I think that the most important point in Williams’ article is the discussion of perception in younger generation. It is said in the article that children perceive the label of “reader” as a negative thing, and “good reader” as a positive thing. Many of the comments regarding being a reader are about being alone and not interacting with people. A common misconception is that reading can only be a solitary practice. The largest take-away I got from this article is that we as a culture, and those of us who plan on becoming teachers especially, need to teach younger generations to regard reading, no matter the purpose, as a positive and rewarding experience. Without this change in perception and learning practices regarding reading, our culture faces a severe decline in the number of people who identify openly as readers, and fewer still who will actively be willing to read outside of academic or occupational situations. This would lead to not only a disappointing statistic for those of us interested and invested in education, but also a horrible outlook for the future of our country and our world.