This week, I became a student again after four years, and my journey back to education began with Writing Interactive Media. I read a lot about how to read and write digitally and how it differs from reading and writing physical text. As I learned more about these concepts, I realized many of them were ones that I already knew. I don’t mean I knew these concepts because I’ve learned them previously in another class. I knew them because I’ve grown up in this digital age, and I’ve been reading online for as long as I can remember. Sure, if you had asked me a week ago to explain the best practices of writing an article meant to read online, I wouldn’t have known what to say. But, as I read about it, I realized I had been the reader affected by all these rules. Now that I’ve had this experience learning these rules, it feels like I knew them all along. They make perfect sense to my experiences of being a reader in modern day.

I enjoy keeping up with what is happening in news, pop culture, sports, and more, so I frequently read articles online, and now I understand why some articles are more appealing to me than others. Skimming and the importance of using tools to make online text skimmable, such as subheadings, images, lists, and highlighted key words, is a concept that came up often in what I read this week. As a reader, I’ve benefited from these tools before ever understanding the impact of what the writer was doing.

I love to read fiction in my free time, and the Kindle is a purchase I’ve toyed with making for many years. But I can never bring myself to do it. Why? Because I love reading my physical books. Before, I couldn’t tell you exactly why, other than I like the feeling of it. “Being a Better Online Reader” by Maria Konnikova brings up Anne Mangen’s hypothesis that the presence of a physical book is significant, and not just because it’s nostalgic. Mangen conducted a study where students read a story on a Kindle or a physical paperback. When the students got asked to explain the plot, the ones who read the physical book made less errors. That stuck out to me because I realized when I read a physical book, the feeling I like so much is being immersed in the story. Deep down, I’ve always known this without realizing, and I’ve never given in and bought a Kindle.

It’s interesting how one can know something without being aware that they know it. One can recognize patterns in the world without articulating them. Not because the patterns can’t be articulated, but because it’s not one’s focus at the time. What I learned this week will stick with me in my future when reading. I will notice it and focus on it, and I’ll have a better understanding of why I read what I do.