I got an email from a student last night who was worried about how much he had to read for nursing school. It can be pretty scary when you first get handed the syllabus and it has things listed like “read pages 45-178″ and it’s a class that meets three times a week!

If you have a chance to take a “speed reading” class before school, I definitely recommend that. However, there are ways to increase your reading speed and comprehension without investing that kind of time and money.

The simplest trick for reading faster is…to read faster. Does that sounds like the world’s most obvious advice? Think about it: when you are reading the Sunday paper (well, when you were reading the Sunday paper before you started nursing school) did you ever make any special effort to read quickly? Probably not, unless you were in some special kind of time crunch. But just thinking “I should read quicker” will actually make you more aware of your speed and will make probably indeed make you read a little quicker. It might feel uncomfortable at first, but if you push yourself at first, you’ll notice the quicker reading will become natural. Of course, there is still the issue of reading comprehension which is, come to think of it, the point of reading in the first place. We’ll address that in tomorrow’s post.