Several Cadets mentioned they do not have time or energy for professional reading during our classroom discussion. Is professional reading an essential element of self-development? Is a leader who reads constantly better than one who does not? So I feel like I have to answer this question as I am one of those who feels profession reading can take up a lot of time that I don’t always have. I would like to say that the idea of professional reading is more to get the story out of the book and not to improve your reading ability or to use a wider vocabulary. Professional reading helps us picture the story and gain knowledge on certain topics that others might have experienced before us. I think reading gives us a sense of experience through the ideas of someone else and allows us to see how they might have handled a specific situation. In regards to answering the idea that a leader is better because he/she reads, might be a little far stretched.  They might have an idea of how to handle certain situations but unless they’ve read a book relating to the certain mission at hand, at the end of the day those books they read might not help here. So I would have to say it really depends on the book and what experience both have had beforehand.
How can Cadets fit ‘professional reading’ into an already busy academic schedule? How to do you manage to get some professional reading done? I think this question applies a lot to me as I find myself too busy to read a book when I’ve already read countless articles for other classes. In the article discussing trying alternatives to reading, I found it quite interesting to see his stance on audiobooks. This idea that I can just listen to someone else read a book while I do something else with my time allows me to hit two birds with one stone as some might say. I do wonder though how this isn’t considered cheating for the reader. Listening to a book allows me to get the same knowledge and understanding of the book but doesn’t necessarily help me become a better reader. Where does this differ from watching a movie? All a movie does is show pictures and words so audiobooks are merely eliminating the idea of the picture. So if I want to start looking into doing professional reading, maybe I might want to start by looking into profession audiobooks.  Not necessarily the same thing but I might get the same information out of them.
Finally, share a book or resource you’ve read recently (over the summer or this semester) and include a short description of it. Your choice can be fiction or non-fiction, military or non-military related.
A recent book that I read over this summer was called The innocent man by John Grisham. The book tells the story of Ronald ‘Ron’ Keith Williamson of Ada, Oklahoma, a former minor league baseball player who was wrongly convicted in 1988 of the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter in Ada and was sentenced to death. After serving 11 years on death row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence and other material introduced by the Innocence Project and was released in 1999.”