When I have helped my children or their friends with their math or science homework, I could usually tell why they needed help. Assuming that they at least looked at the text, they likely hadn’t read the section in the text with any sort of comprehension. They wanted to get to what was important to them: getting the homework problems done as quickly as possible.

It’s been many years since I was a student, but I still remember a statement from my probability and statistics professor. Part way through the quarter, he held up the textbook and said, “This is not a novel!” It took me a few moments to get his meaning. It’s likely your textbook is not a novel, to be read for its enjoyment (or for the hidden meanings the English teachers say exist). Most of your textbooks were written by world-renowned experts in their fields. They don’t pad the book with wide margins, extraneous pictures, unnecessary words, and useless equations. You need to understand every sentence, every graph, and every equation. You won’t get there by just reading the text without comprehending it. In the class I am currently teaching there are extended sections in the textbook that derive some pretty complicated equations. You can’t just browse them and claim you understand them unless you got a perfect SAT score. To understand them requires the student to pause at each step to understand what the author did.

Once you understand what is involved in the derivation, you will have a much better idea of how to apply it to solving problems. It may seem like it’s slowing you down and keeping you from getting your problems done, but in the long run it will make things quicker and easier. Bottom line: don’t rush through your reading (or ignore it completely) so that you can get to solving your problems. It’s worth the effort to study the text and not proceed until you have a true understanding of both the theory and how to apply it to solving the problems.

On a related topic, professors don’t assign problems with the answers at the back of the book to make it easy on the students. I assign answered-problems so that the student is not in the dark about whether or not he got it wrong with the expectation that they will rework it until they can demonstrate to themselves that they understand the method of solution. Demonstrate to your professor that you care about learning and take the time and effort to do it right.

Finally, while I was writing this piece it came to me that another book of instruction should not be rushed through without comprehension: the Bible. How often do we read it just to complete our self-prescribed “assignment” and consider ourselves done? And are we reading it so that we understand how the concepts can be applied to the problems of our lives? And how disappointing will it be to face God with the wrong answer for our problems when the right answer was in the book.