Year after year, Staples students are assigned books that never get read. They stay buried in your backpack, collect dust on your bedside table or age next to your abacus until the day you need to return the ancient reading device.

Many of the assigned books are regarded as classics and must-reads. The books shaped society, revolutionized the literary community and have been studied for decades. It’s time that era ended. There’s no need to read those books anymore.

A simple trip to either Sparknotes or Shmoop easily takes care of any reading you may have been assigned. I personally have never read an entire book for a high school English course, nor do I plan to. I apologize to all my past and current teachers who are just hearing this now, but I feel as if they must have known all along from any pop quizzes they may have sprung on me.

The moment you’re handed that pop quiz is unlike any other. You didn’t know it was coming. No one is sitting near you to ask what happened in the chapter. You’re simply doomed. Sadly there’s no way around this.

Unlike pop quizzes, papers are one of the easier assignments one can receive using the shmoop strategy. Some may say that it would be impossible to write a well developed paper without reading the book, but they’re simply incorrect. The ability to write a paper on a book you haven’t read is a true form of art.

Taking two or three pages of a book you attempted to read and turning them into a full length paper should be an Olympic sport, a Pulitzer Prize category and a viable career option. The ability to accomplish such a task is a necessity if you want to pass English while keeping your eyes off the crumpled pages of a school book and glued to the glorious moving pictures on the television screen