Reading has been on my mind a lot lately.  I really started thinking about it in mid January just prior to the start of the semester. I had two alumni give me books and said I should read them. I thought that was great.  What better to pass on to someone than knowledge?  Then I thought to myself, “I wonder if they think I don’t do enough reading.”  Since that time, I have gotten more books that I had ordered late in December and early January.  This past week I read a post on sportsinfo101.com (which is in my blog roll and if are not reading it regularly you should) about his “addiction” to reading and it once again got me thinking. I think that we sometimes take reading for granted, for example trying to get students to read not just textbooks, but supplementary materials such as articles in journals or newspapers is worse than pulling teeth. One of my assignments to the students is a topic of the day.  The student who is charged with the topic of the day is responsible for finding something non-sport related, of interest that is going on in the world and generate a discussion regarding it in class.  Most students get the topic from the television news, not from the internet news sources.

            With technology making information more accessible than ever before, reading becomes more important as well. Since individuals don’t have to subscribe to newspapers or carry around books anymore in order to get information/read for pleasure, one would think that it would be more accepted and natural to spend more time reading. The most successful people do a whole lot of reading and they read about a variety of topics. Below are five reasons why reading is critical to one’s success in today’s society:

• With the globalization of the world it is imperative to know and understand events as they happen and to understand their impact on daily life.
• To be considered an expert or a respected information source you have to incorporate current examples regardless of subject manner to maintain credibility.
• You have to be read enough to be fluent and quickly comprehend anything a teacher/employer assigns you to read.
• With the myriad of ways we get information (text, e-mail, internet etc…) one must be able to quickly discern quality information from the many inaccurate items in circulation.
• If you don’t read you won’t pass class/graduate/get the job you want etc…!

            In case you were wondering, I do read a lot, but mostly out of necessity. In fact, one of my personal goals in the coming days, weeks, months is to read more of the things I want to read. For now I’m starting with the books given to me by former students since they are top my list to read for fun!