One for the RSS Feed

So during the first of my two campus visits, I went to a Q&A with current grad students in the program.  The questions eventually slowed to a trickle.  Suddenly I thought of a good one, and raised my hand.  Yes?  "Do you guys have enough time to read?" I asked.  It sowed general confusion.  Did I mean, time to do the class reading?  I shook my head.  Or, like, reading novels for pleasure?  Light reading?  I shook my head again, and gave up.

What I meant was this: suppose you are assigned a short essay by a late 20th-century theorist who refers extensively to, say, Brecht's Kleine Organon für das Theater, and you have no idea where he or she is coming from, so you go in search of the Brecht and discover that it is indeed klein and you can polish it off in an evening.  Now, having read the Brecht, you think you understand a little more and it may be time to tackle Benjamin's essay, "What is Epic Theater?", which seemed gnomic and mysterious the last time you read it.  Do you have time to do that reading?  That is, do you have time to learn more than you're required to by others— because no professor can ever give you the complete story, unless it's a semester course on Hermann Hesse or something you do not want— and to learn enough to answer your own questions?  Do you have time to read as much as you need?

My answer for this program, so far, is no.  There is no time whatsoever to do outside reading.  There is a little time to do the course reading.  There is a tiny bit of time beyond that to eat dark chocolate chipotle almonds, and about 13.5 minutes left over for the blog each week.  I think I'm over this week's limit here already.