Reading Books as an Undergraduate

I was reading Tony's review of Reinventing Jesus over at Apocryphicity today and my first reaction was "nuh uh". I read R.J. awhile back on my own, then I read it in Hermeneutics class (not the appropriate class to read it, but still neat to read). I really appreciated Komoszewski's, Sawyer's, and Wallace's work in the book. However, I had a bit of a realization after reading the review....as an undergraduate, sometimes...most times....I have very little clue what I'm talking about. My first reaction to say "nuh uh" came out of a desire to defend the book, not because I have some well-reasoned argument against what Tony wrote (it may exist, I just don't have it). The realization was that, as an undergraduate, I feel comfortable with taking people to ask with their methodology, or their reasoning....but I just don't know enough about particular areas to criticize them.

I'm a bit like the kid in the playground who wants to go play football with all the high school kids (Graduate and Post-Graduate students in this case). I think the undergraduate period is a good time of just reading as much as possible, assessing ideas, and preparing yourself for really jumping into these ideas and evaluating them along with learning more facts that will help you shape your own opinions.