Reading the Instructions Thoroughly

In graduate school, I had to proctor and collect an exam for a teacher who was going to be out that day. It was a 50-question true-or-false test.

The instructions read as followed.

Please answer the following statements "true" or "false." Answers of "T" or "F" will not be accepted and counted as a zero mark.

The instructor forbade me from allowing a student to take their paper back after handing it in.

There were about 150 students in the class (music appreciation class, "stadium seating" style).

Forty or so of them answered "T" or "F" for all the questions. Realizing their mistake after leaving the room, they sprinted back in. They begged for their exams back.

I had to say no. Those were the rules.

Was the instructor being a little uptight? Maybe.

But the story goes to show you how conditioned we are to skim things. And how we tend to assume a lot of things when we're in a rush.

If students have answered every true/false exam of their lives with "T" or "F," why should this be any different? Why bother reading past the first sentence of the instructions?

The same happens in music lessons. It's become a rare occasion for a student to read all of the lesson notes from top to bottom before and during each practice session.

But lesson notes are more than a list of things to practice. More than a list of tasks to be carried out. They're instructions on how to practice.

A map to the proverbial buried treasure.

And without reading the instructions thoroughly, it's like wandering aimlessly for said treasure while the map is in your backpack.

Sounds a bit silly when I put it that way, right?