Why is Reading Boring?

Until I reached college, every literature class was the same. Read a text, analyze a text, find a meaning, find the symbolism, who is the author? Maybe I'm a kill joy and I don't mean to be. But all of this is irrelevant to me unless I take something away from the text. I can tell you all about the Scarlet Letter and that it means nothing to me. When it comes to texts, I have no connection with them unless a teacher tells me to make a connection, which they normally don't do in High School. "We're preparing you for college because this is how it's done there." What about the audience? Do they not matter? What about how we feel about it? We might have an idea of what the author was trying to say but unless the teacher sees it that way, we're wrong. The interactions in The Dead remind me of the dead themselves. It was a lot of talking... A lot of story telling. Parties, dancing... Talking, talking, talking... But what I can take away from it is exactly what the author meant. There is death in these every day conversations despite the life happening around Gabriel. I still cannot confidently say I have taken anything from The Dead but I understand what we are supposed to take from it.