No. It was a frequent topic of conversation among college classmates. It was mainly as a way to commiserate over the 800-1000 page average weekly reading loads per seminar/colloquium class and to exchange insights/techniques on how to best tackle that load as effectively and efficiently timewise as possible so we could juggle other class assignments, ECs, part-time jobs, or just time to hang out or enjoy fun campus activities like watching Avery Brooks performing live on campus.
One older classmate would frequently ask me how I was able to get through our weekly class readings as quickly as I could whereas he’d struggle and often not finish. A factor which caused him serious academic problems he was trying to avoid the second time around.
“Most students most of the time just don’t put in the effort it takes to do academic work really well, even when they have the ability.”
I absolutely agree from the parents’ prospective. D. kept saying that the step up in efforts from HS to college is absolutely needed. She saw that good number of HS valedictorians (in Honors college) were derailed from their initial track because they simply did not realize that having the same level of academic effort that they had in HS simply is not enough at college. D. actually was shocked by the gap, but as she did not want to be derailed from her path, she stepped up and endured. She still think of herself as an average person with great work ethic and she absolutely could not afford many B’s at college, so she made sure to do enough work to get an A in every class. She achieved her goal. I cannot say that her work was outstanding or impressive or whatever, it was simply enough to get an A. She never aimed at any higher as she was extremely busy at college pursuing many non-academic interests and making sure that she participated in certain ECs that were required for med. school application.
As for reading, she has been slower reader, which I believe improved in med. school. it did not drag her down at all. She also mentioned that she was never impressed by fast readers as they seem not to absorb as deep and needed help even after they read material.
She’s obviously never met folks like that college classmate.
He never needed help and absorbed so much he along with yours truly were often the ones to provide help to other classmates in our class who struggled to finish the weekly reading loads or with some of the concepts/content covered within. In fact, I was and to some extent, still am jealous of his ability to be machine like in being able to retain everything he reads despite his rapid reading pace and be equally effective in connecting different readings and analyzing them.
It also didn’t hurt him in his PhD program or landing a tenure-track assistant Prof job just 4 years after starting his PhD. A remarkably fast time and feat considering the average time to completion in his field is at least twice as long and most from what I’ve seen/heard would need to pursue at least one post-doc before landing a tenure-track assistant Prof position at a respectable university somewhere in the NW no less.
^But then wouldn’t the point be that your classmate was exceptional and therefore an exception to the rule that most college students cannot read and absorb the material presented in a reasonably rigorous college course with a 2-hour a week effort?