I still remember the weight of my undergraduate backpack, an awkward, overstuffed creature bulging with books, printed articles, and notebooks.
I used to complain about it constantly. Yet, now, when I watch students stroll into classrooms carrying nothing more than a laptop, or an iPad and the expectation that “the slides will be enough,” I find myself missing that weight.
Over the last decade, we have quietly traded the slow world of reading for the breezy convenience of slide decks. PowerPoints have become the academic equivalent of quick, digestible, and engineered content to keep the newer generation moving.
But like fast food, slides offer a version of learning that is convenient, yet shallow.
A few years ago, while preparing for an exam during my second master’s course, at the University of Kentucky, I convinced myself that I would be efficient by relying entirely on the professor’s slides. They were “trendy,” perfectly structured, and seemed to hit all the key points.
I flipped through them repeatedly, twenty-five slides, or maybe around thirty. I felt so confident! It was saving my time! But that illusion only lasted until I opened the exam materials and realized that while the slide had named the concepts.
It was the readings that had explained them more. Slides helped me to recognize the terms but not the reasoning behind them. It was the academic equivalent of knowing a book’s title but nothing about its plot.
After this painful lesson, in a more research-based academic environment in Kentucky, I went back to the dreaded stack of articles and the thick textbooks. It took more time, nearly one week to complete a particular chapter, but yes!
The difference was almost embarrassing. Reading forced me to slow down, scribble questions in the margins, and make connections that no slide ever prompted me to make.
This is, I think, what we risk losing!
Slides flatten the deeper knowledge. They compress nuance into bullet points and arguments into diagrams. Of course! Slides are important for illustrating a lecture, but also disastrous when they become substitutes for actual learning.
Books and research papers help us into a relationship with the topic. They demand patience, attention, and consistency. Every student must sit with the material, not just skim it.
The irony is that we often defend our slide dependency by claiming we are “saving time.” But most of us aren’t saving time, rather we are saving effort. And effort is the very muscle that reading strengthens.
As a faculty member, I always notice in my teaching university that my students ask this question: “Will this be on the slides?” as if the slides are the official reality and everything else is optional.
But most of the transformative academic moments I have learned from reading materials that were not summarized anywhere. They shaped the way I think far more than any slide deck ever could.
To be clear, slides are not the enemy. The problem is treating them as the primary form of learning instead of what they were meant to be guides, not replacements. They should spark curiosity, not ruin it.
So maybe we need to rethink the culture we have been quietly building. Maybe instructors should assign fewer slides and more conversations around actual texts.
And maybe all of us, me included, should remember that reading is not just an academic exercise but a cognitive one. It gives us depth and the ability to think in complete sentences rather than bullet points.
I can surely say that my old backpack may have been heavy, but the ideas it carried, were far weightier, and far more worth keeping.
The author is an assistant professor of Mass Communication and Journalism at Bangladesh University of Professionals. She has been in academia for 8 years. Beyond that, she likes to write and explore different cultures and human communication.
