TLDR

Amy E. Barr, The Lukeion Project

Savvy text-fluent young people like myself know that TLDR means, “too long/didn’t read.” This is often shorthand for, “can you just summarize this article for me, so I don’t have to waste my time reading it?”  More times than not, TL/DR just suggests that no matter how important the contents of a personal missive/blog/article/assignment or (heaven forbid) book might be, ((shrug)) it was just much too long to read.

I know I LOOK young and text-savvy, but I’ve been teaching now for 25+ years. I started well before human communication transformed into today’s lingo of trills, whistles, dank memes, and seemingly random letters indicating (for example) that recipients of even the dumbest jokes or cat videos have been writhing on the floor in mirth when we all know those liars never even giggled once or even moved their face.

I can also remember what it was like to distribute instructions to students and expect them to read those instructions all the way to the end, even if those instructions exceeded five highly abbreviated bullet points in a short email.

Ah! Those were the days! All I needed to do was indicate that a large percentage of grade points could be docked if a student failed to read and follow instructions! That was all the incentive students needed, poor old-fashioned things. Now If I can’t detail what’s expected in a 7-page writing project or a proctored exam or even a short quiz in under 9 words, most can’t even.

So, what gives? People are still able to read, and they usually still care about learning new things, and most are even vaguely interested in doing things properly while earning a decent grade. Nevertheless, TL/DR. Dozens of times each semester I will go back to read the instructions I prominently posted for an assignment to check if I am losing my mind! Did I tell them how to format the project and what type of sources to use? Yes! I did! There are my instructions right there! Yet some students just can’t bring themselves to read those instructions...at least not ALL of them.

Focus has gone AWOL.

Old people: remember the good old days when you might watch an entire one hour show without splitting the time evenly with whatever you were also doing on your phone? Back in my day (you whippersnappers), some people would even watch an entire show without picking up any additional electronic devices! My grandparents even tell me of a time when one would put on music or turn on a radio to listen to the music or news…a whole hour only listening! Noobs.

Today’s modern specimen prefers the rolling chaos of a streaming video binge plus a game plus 2 or 3 friends texting, snapping, tweeting, plus regular checks for “likes” or status updates or new posts all while chatting idly with a group online. School books are open, pens and notebooks are ready, but there’s such a craving for pandemonium that these things can’t be silenced!

Now, there’s a good word: pandemonium.  Look it up! We find it in print for the first time in 1667 in "Paradise Lost" as the name of the palace built in the middle of Hell, "the high capital of Satan and all his peers," coined by John Milton. It comes from Greek pan "all" + Late Latin daemonium "evil spirit." By 1779 it firmed up to mean a "place of uproar."

Most of us now live in a place of uproar. We have lost focus. We have no quiet place of concentration. There’s no pause in the storm to read anything from beginning to end, to hear anything, to focus on anything. Gone are the days of mono-tasking. The truth is that many consider everything too long to read, hear, feel, consider.

The next time you are tasked with reading something important. Try to focus. Turn off everything and monotask. I promise the discomfort of not knowing what else is going on will pass eventually. You can do it! Read the whole assignment! View the whole class recording. Enjoy the whole chapter. Get through the whole discussion board comment without breaking focus.  Make a scorecard for the week and give yourself a treat every time you KEEP your focus to finish a solitary task before switching your context to something newer, louder, funnier, shinier.

You can do it! I have faith in you. Are you still reading? Give yourself a treat!