39. You are asked to do the impossible.

If you have never seen a graduate-level reading list, you may be in for a surprise. The largest part of your reading load is usually assigned as preparation for your comprehensive (or general) exams, but individual courses also require a great deal of reading. Reading lists are so long that it really isn’t possible for anyone but the fastest readers to read the hundreds of books and articles that are assigned in a typical graduate program. Part of the high graduate-school drop-out rate is no doubt the result of well-intentioned students making this terrible discovery the hard way.

Enormous reading loads persist despite the overall decline in academic expectations (see Reason 6). The reading lists are so long in part because of the unbelievable volume of academic literature that is constantly published (see Reason 33) and in part because professors are reluctant to shorten lists to a manageable length in a climate in which long reading lists are considered de rigeur. The consequence of this has been the redefinition of “reading.” A successful graduate student quickly learns that to “read” a work of scholarship is simply to grasp its basic argument (usually made clear in the introduction) so that there is time to move on to the next book. Retaining what you have read even using this abbreviated form of reading remains a challenge when you are faced with a list of 200 or 300 titles.