In a competitive school where the majority of students are enrolled in honors courses and APs, the last thing students need is more work – especially over the summer.
The Langley Read, a program implemented last year with the intention of unifying the school through a common experience, turned out to be just a resented addition to our workload.
The last time I read a book on my own was July 2009. As a confessed slow-reader who can’t read multiple books at a time, it takes me about a month to read one I enjoy.
Especially with sports, vacations and other activities during the summer, “we’re all going to wait until the last minute to read it, and with what we have to read for English classes, no one’s really going to take away anything from it,” said junior Sherwin Zahirieh.
Last year’s book, “Outliers,” was an obnoxious 309-pager that basically argued that if you weren’t born in the right place at the right time, that you’d never succeed. When I was about halfway through, it was already a week into August, and I realized I still hadn’t started “The Scarlet Letter” or the 97 pages of the AP U.S. History textbook I was supposed to read. I had no choice but to put it down.
Also, with such a diverse population at our school, finding a book that has something all 2,000 of us have in common to achieve unity is practically impossible.
Another student, junior Anna Fahlberg said she “feels like the book that the school picks doesn’t appeal to everyone,” and would rather write a report about a book of her choice.
As for me, I can’t wait until I can finally read a book that I choose, which at this rate isn’t until graduation – a full three years since the last one.