We've all been there. You're sitting in class, be it high school or college, and you get your next assignment: read Insert Title of Boring or Intimidating Book Here.

Reading isn't for everyone. Sometimes it's not even for the people who love to read. Some books have certain reputations attached to them that make you roll your eyes before the book is even in your hands. It makes us unmotivated; it makes us want to cry; it makes us pull up Sparknotes.

But sometimes, if we give the book a chance, it makes us better.

I had to read Moby Dick earlier this semester for my Modern American Literature course. I just about pitched a fit. "It's too long." "The print is small." "I don't care about a whale." "I don't understand." I absolutely did not want to read this book.

But then I did.

And I found myself entranced. Moby Dick is hilarious. People that don't read Moby Dick don't know it's hilarious. People that only read the Sparknotes of Moby Dick don't know it's hilarious.

The way I explain the humor is "It's hilarious if you're dead inside." When I'm not being completely self-deprecating, I realize that's not true. It's not hilarious because I'm dead inside, it's hilarious because I needed it. I needed that humor, I needed those moments of laughter sprinkled between passages of the history of whaling and passages of intense and enlightening prose that make your breath catch in your throat and your body go numb with feeling.

I wouldn't have undergone those experiences if I had given up on Moby Dick before I started. You never know what you'll find between the pages of a book. When we're looking forward to reading, this is part of the anticipation. But when we don't want to read, we don't even consider the possibilities.

I do my student teaching in a 6th-grade language arts class. One of the units focused on the big question "Why do we read?" In a small group, I had some kids tell me they read for entertainment, some for education, and one girl who said "Can I be honest? I only read because I'm forced to."

I asked if she had ever read a book for school that she liked, and after a minute of thought she said, "Well I guess so, during silent reading time."

"What about the book made you like it?"

Another moment of thought before: "Because I didn't expect to like it so when it got interesting I wanted to keep reading. And even though I was forced to read it, it was okay because it was good."

Sometimes the greatest gems of reading come from unexpected places. The books we read in class, we read for a reason. We moan and complain because they're "old" or "boring," but how can we really know until we read them? Books last through time because they are good; because they changed society; because they change one person's perspective.

I will probably continue to moan and complain, but the complaints will stop the moment before I start reading; when I'm simply holding the book, stroking the spine, flipping the pages for the new (or old) book smell. The complaints will end when I settle down, and the fact that I begin to read is in itself a question to the universe: what do you have to teach me?

Read the books you don't want to read and learn things you never thought you didn't know.