When I step into the hot rain of the shower and close the door behind me, I enter some kind of free mind zone and all sorts of random thoughts and memories swirl around me with the steam. I do some of my best thinking in there and while putting on my makeup in the mornings. I’m open to lots of stuff, nearly to the point of clairvoyance. This morning, I had memories of high school.

In 11th grade AP US History, our teacher Mr. Cook stood at the podium telling us what to study for our upcoming midterm, as the class took notes as fast as our adolescent fingers would allow motion (which, if you’ve ever been an adolescent, you know is pretty darn fast, wink wink). “Chapter 6, Roosevelt and the Threat of War, scan that. Also scan the Study Question section of that chapter. Chapter 7, section 1.5, scan that.” And so he went on.
Finally, shaking my hand in pain, I paused and asked him, “Wait — do you mean scan or skim?” Cuz I was NOT about to read that much crap and memorize the big list he was giving us if I didn’t have to.
Mr. Cook looked over at me silently like he was evaluating what level of moronity I had dropped to. “It’s the same thing,” he said, and seemed to visibly fight the urge to end his statement with “duh!”.
“No it’s not, scan is to read over something carefully for the details and skim is to just look it over really fast.”
Mr. Cook stared at me another moment, expressionless. One of the most popular guys in our year, a scholar athlete who just happened to be in my AP History class, yelled out impatiently, “Who cares?!”
“Well, I don’t want to read and memorize pages and pages of material if he meant we only had to skim them!” I said. I mean, DUH!
Mr. Cook walked purposefully to the back of the classroom to his desk. He yanked a big red hardback tome off his shelf, presumably a dictionary, and flipped to a page. He looked down and “skimmed” for a few seconds. Then he flipped over another few pages and “skimmed” a different section. He closed the volume, placed it back on his shelf, and walked back to the front of the classroom in the silence of 32 pairs of eyes. He resumed his position behind the podium.
“Chapter 6, Roosevelt and the Threat of War, skim that.”