copiousness, cash, and value

recently, i have been inundated with reading; or, i have lots of reading to do; or, i have lots of time ahead of me, during which, i will be looking at sentences like these. (however, the sentences that i will be looking at will be, almost certainly, less convoluted than these.)

when faced with situations like these the following question inevitably arises: namely, "(1) is it better to read all of the sentences quickly; (2) read some of the sentences (or sections) carefully and skip others; or, (3) read some carefully and some quickly. obviously if (4) one could read carefully and quickly, then the answer to this question is obvious: namely, do that (i.e. (4)). however, in my case, this is not an option. so, i'm stuck between (1)-(3). suppose, for arguments sake, that (3) is not an option (perhaps because even (3) will take too long); if this is the case, then is it better to do (1) or (2)? i'm really not sure. maybe it depends on what you are reading it for.

consider the following argument for the claim that, when pressed for time, one should do (2). suppose that you are reading the material for a class. this class happens to be with a professor that frequently asks: "does anyone have any questions or concerns about the reading?" if the material was for this course, then (2) seems like the best approach to take. why? because, when this question is asked, you can promptly put up your hand and ask a question or make a comment or voice a concern about at least one of the passages that you read carefully. if you do this, then you just might avoid being asked questions for the rest of class. (of course this plan is not immune to backfire. the professor might be one who feels incredibly awkward with the thought of silence and hence asks you, the eager student, every time he or she has a question about the text. this would be bad.) so, although this plan might backfire, i think that employing (2) as a method of attack is the best route to go.

well... maybe not. consider this argument for (1) being the best plan of attack. if you were to employ (2) and there was a reading quiz, short answer lets say, then you would likely find yourself in a very awkward situation because there will likely be a number of questions that, having employed method (2), you will not be able to answer; in fact, there will be a number of questions that you won't have a clue about. however, if you had employed battle plan (1), then you would be ready to (probably) answer any of the short answer questions. So, a better grade would result.

well... there are more arguments for why one ought to fly ones x-wing fighter down path (1) instead of path (2) and vice versa; so it is not clear what conclusion we should draw...

...well actually, there is one thing that we can conclude from this investigation; namely, writing a blog post is the way to make scaling the pile of reading insurmountable.

q.e.d.