I haven't posted in a while, though I'm not sure it matters. I've come to terms with the fact that this blog serves my selfish need for therapeutic writing rather than any unfilled need of fellow obsessors. That's okay.
Just in case, though, I want to share a new tool I've found. One of the ways my OCD manifests itself is through excruciatingly careful reading. I can't decide if it makes no sense or perfect sense that I have two degrees in English. Either way, I am a very slow and careful reader. My painstaking attention to every sentence and it's meaning, undertones, relation to the main idea of the piece, etc. really slow me down. This does come in handy when I'm editing a paper or reading a dense piece of social or literary theory. However, when I'm just trying to get through a week's worth of PhD coursework reading, much of it only tangentially related to anything I'm studying, pouring over each sentence is counterproductive.
Even as I read the week's long and detailed articles and books, I know the goal is to get the main idea not to master the concepts. However, my OCD brain won't listen to reason. That comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the disease. So my new tool has turned out to be amazing.
The website spreeder.com offers a free online speed reading application. The goal of the app is not to help you learn to speed read, though Spreeder does offer products that do. Instead, you load the material you're reading into the application and choose a pace. The application starts you out at 300 words per minute showing you one word at a time. When you hit play, the words flash before you, one at a time, at the pace you've chosen. This paces your reading and forces you to keep moving even when you're tempted to reread.
The application has been great for me. At first, I was skeptical about how much I could really take in reading at a pace far faster than I was accustomed to. I knew I was a very competent reader, but I'd spent my whole life dwelling on each word and sentence, so I doubted my ability to keep up with the shockingly fast pace of 300 WPM. However, after "spreeding" a couple of pieces and quizzing myself on the content, I found I retained about the same amount of knowledge as when I read at a much slower pace.
My fellow PhD students were doubtful about the amount of critical thinking I could do as I read at such a rapid pace. They have a good point. I did have to change how I performed my coursework, but after a few minor changes, I've got a really good system. After I "spreed" a piece, I make notes on what I found compelling or confusing. I write down facts that stuck out and questions I want to pose in the seminar. When I walked into class last week having done these things, I had completed all the reading and retained more than enough to participate in the conversation. I was even able to quote facts and figures using my notes.
I think there are a lot of us with mental illness in PhD programs. A professor once said to me, "We have to be a little crazy to want to spend endless hours alone reading and thinking." And he's probably right. The ruminating associated with anxiety disorders, including OCD, can come in handy working on your dissertation. So the more honest scholars are with one another about our struggles, the stronger academics we can all become--especially if many of us do struggle with the same things.
In that spirit, I'm sharing both my struggle and my solution.
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