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What\u2019s Adultery Got to Do With It?<\/h2>\n
The legal journal article was mostly fine. It discussed whether college athletes injured in their sport were employees qualified for workers\u2019 compensation benefits. The first case of note is the 1953 decision in University of Denver v. Nemeth<\/a>, which held that footballer Ernest Nemeth was indeed an employee for this purpose. Four years later, the same court denied workers\u2019 compensation death benefits<\/a> to the family of a college footballer and coined the term student-athlete.<\/p>\n Then the article\u2019s author went off on a tangent:<\/p>\n \u201cNemeth\u2019s vindication in his workers\u2019 compensation claim actually spawned the moniker student-athlete, which to this day carries ignominy far greater than that of Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s Hester Prynne in \u2018The Scarlet Letter.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThose of us in the insurance industry or working as insurance defense attorneys do not have the time to read works the likes of Hawthorne. We read the writing on the wall and manage the risk associated therewith.\u201d<\/p>\n The 1850 novel \u201cThe Scarlet Letter\u201d is set in Puritan New England, a society not known for its liberal views. The heroine Hester Prynne is forced to wear a red \u201cA\u201d, standing for adultery, for the rest of her life because she had a daughter out of wedlock. The book is a standard high school reading assignment.<\/p>\n The claim that being named a student athlete is a shameful designation at all, let alone one more shameful than an adulteress, is pretty hard to swallow. Did the attorney read the book \u2014 or even a summary of it? What did he think the A stood for \u2014 amateur? Where was the editor of this journal? There is no commandment, \u201cThou Shalt Not Be a Student-Athlete.\u201d<\/p>\n More concerning is the assertion that busy attorneys don\u2019t have time to read books outside of work. There is always time to read, even if it\u2019s only on vacation<\/a>. That\u2019s why they call those books that don\u2019t require a lot of thought \u201cbeach reads.\u201d<\/p>\n Read on your public transit commute. Listen to an audiobook in the car. Keep a book on your nightstand. Reading relaxes you and helps you fall asleep. It\u2019s fine to only get through a few pages before you\u2019re ready to nod off.<\/p>\n Look up the words you don\u2019t know. E-readers make this easy. You can highlight the mystery word. A definition will appear, or you can tap Look Up for foreign words, slang or just more information.<\/p>\n It forces your brain to fill in the blanks. Unlike, for example, movies, a hot medium which leaves little to the imagination, books stimulate you to imagine what a character or a setting looks and sounds like. Though you may be engaged in the plot of a thriller, your mind is noticing things like vocabulary and sentence structure. You are improving your ability to concentrate and your language skills and comprehension.<\/p>\n When you read something you know will be helpful or interesting to a client or referral source, you can pass along information from or about the book or maybe the book itself. The book doesn\u2019t have to relate to their business or the subject of your case. Hopefully, you have developed a relationship so you know a bit about them. Did you read something that relates to their neighborhood, their family, their hobbies? Passing along this information shows you care about this person more than just their monetary value. Those are the people who are most likely to consult you again and refer others.<\/p>\n \u201cI read!\u201d you might protest. \u201cI read stories on the web every day.\u201d Those posts are short; they do nothing to sharpen your powers of concentration. They usually appear on screen with other distractions, sometimes popping up to obscure what you were trying to read, urging you to click to a different screen. The short length mandates that coverage is superficial. It\u2019s often inaccurate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Books generally provide detailed, nuanced and reliable information.<\/strong> A book requires that you focus on following the narrative over a longer period. Most web posts aim for a fifth- to eighth-grade reading level, aimed at the majority of Americans \u2014 not helpful to a lawyer looking for examples of good writing.<\/p>\n While some podcasts are serious, most seem targeted at turning even important subjects into a joke. Podcasters intentionally use basic conversational English. While \u201cGet To The Point\u201d advocates using plain language, particularly in sentence structure, we also advocate developing a rich, powerful vocabulary<\/a> to best convey your legal text and speech. Reading books adds to your working vocabulary.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter what books you read: fiction or nonfiction, short stories or thousand-page novels. Maybe if this writer read books, instead of \u201cthe risk associated therewith,\u201d he would have written<\/a> \u201cthe associated risk.\u201d<\/p>\nA Little Background<\/h2>\n
Reading Makes You Smarter<\/h2>\n
Reading good writing expands your vocabulary. <\/h3>\n
Reading is a cool medium<\/a>. <\/strong><\/h3>\n
Reading books adds to your marketing skills<\/a>. <\/h3>\n
What About Podcasts? <\/h3>\n
\nGet to the Point!<\/h2>\n
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