I met a lovely waitress the other day at Kalypso Greek Restaurant downtown on Robson (I go there a lot). Apparently she just finished her English degree at UBC. I asked her how she enjoyed her studies. She said that if one wants to become an academic, then being in university is an absolutely great place (I think she wants to go on to graduate school). But, she told me, studying English basically killed any desire in her to read for pleasure. She can no longer sit with a book and just read it for enjoyment and/or fun.

She echoed something I hear from many, many English students. It really upsets me that university education can end up doing this. And, indeed, I specifically blame university education for this phenomenon. The competition, petty insecurities, and politics in English departments (which in turn can't help but breed excessive, almost neurotic one-upsmanship between professors and between students in so-called "critical and sophisticated literary analysis") invariably becomes associated in the brain with reading. It's as if a learned aversion develops to reading because as soon as we think of a book, we automatically think of our uncomfortable experiences in English classes. What a pure shame that higher learning has done this. Shame on the university. Shame.