Can reading help my overall intelligence, understanding, and comprehension?

Yes, it can. But not just running your eyes over the words and not just reading easy and fun things. You're going to want to read things that are well-written and well-edited and that are somewhat challenging, and you're going to want to think seriously about what you read. Get a stack of Post-Its so that even with a library book you can put questions that occur to you as you're reading something on the relevant page. Make a note of words that are unfamiliar to you or that aren't used in a way that makes sense to you, so you can look them up later. With texts that you know you aren't really mastering, read them through once quickly and then again, slowly, making notes, trying to figure out what the writer is getting at and why she or he is making certain choices. You can find things that interest you that meet my suggestions above. For instance, since you like science classes, maybe you'd enjoy the book "Plastic Fantastic," which is about how a scientist committed significant fraud and was eventually caught. Or you might like "The Radioactive Boy Scout," which is about how a high school kid built a model nuclear reactor with parts he got fairly easily. Both of those are non-fiction but written for general audiences by good writers. You might be interested in Gleick's book on chaos, Hardy's book "A Mathematician's Apology" (note: "apology" here is used in a way that contemporary Americans rarely use the word), and Holland's books on complexity. If you can read them easily enough, then you will probably want to go up a step. Your professors can probably recommend journal articles that would interest you. If you are still having to concentrate, you will probably want to read some more at that level -- and magazines like The Economist and The New Yorker and newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post are good sources of shorter pieces that tend to be well written. I'd recommend White's "The Idea Factory" (the one about MIT, not the new book about Bell Labs), too: it's about an engineering grad student who works hard and sometimes falls short, and I think it's a much better picture of how education is supposed to work than most of us get. If none of that sounds interesting (it's all stuff that interests me, and your interests may be different), I'd go talk to a librarian. If you have a public library card you can use over the summer, you'll be able to get popular nonfiction that way and use the internet for the more challenging stuff. An academic librarian at school will be able to help you even more. Being a good reader gives you the opportunity to see how other people reason and will enable you to respond intelligently to other people's thoughts and arguments. An even better reader can figure out how the writer would respond to his or her own responses. And seeing arguments and explanations laid out, and taking them apart to see how they work, will help give you the building blocks for really good arguments and explanations of your own. And of course being able to read technical material successfully will give you the facts and ideas to reason with. So yes, I think you're making a smart move, and I hope it goes well for you.

Yes, it can. But not just running your eyes over the words and not just reading easy and fun things. You're going to want to read things that are well-written and well-edited and that are somewhat challenging, and you're going to want to think seriously about what you read. Get a stack of Post-Its so that even with a library book you can put questions that occur to you as you're reading something on the relevant page. Make a note of words that are unfamiliar to you or that aren't used in a way that makes sense to you, so you can look them up later. With texts that you know you aren't really mastering, read them through once quickly and then again, slowly, making notes, trying to figure out what the writer is getting at and why she or he is making certain choices. You can find things that interest you that meet my suggestions above. For instance, since you like science classes, maybe you'd enjoy the book "Plastic Fantastic," which is about how a scientist committed significant fraud and was eventually caught. Or you might like "The Radioactive Boy Scout," which is about how a high school kid built a model nuclear reactor with parts he got fairly easily. Both of those are non-fiction but written for general audiences by good writers. You might be interested in Gleick's book on chaos, Hardy's book "A Mathematician's Apology" (note: "apology" here is used in a way that contemporary Americans rarely use the word), and Holland's books on complexity. If you can read them easily enough, then you will probably want to go up a step. Your professors can probably recommend journal articles that would interest you. If you are still having to concentrate, you will probably want to read some more at that level -- and magazines like The Economist and The New Yorker and newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post are good sources of shorter pieces that tend to be well written. I'd recommend White's "The Idea Factory" (the one about MIT, not the new book about Bell Labs), too: it's about an engineering grad student who works hard and sometimes falls short, and I think it's a much better picture of how education is supposed to work than most of us get. If none of that sounds interesting (it's all stuff that interests me, and your interests may be different), I'd go talk to a librarian. If you have a public library card you can use over the summer, you'll be able to get popular nonfiction that way and use the internet for the more challenging stuff. An academic librarian at school will be able to help you even more. Being a good reader gives you the opportunity to see how other people reason and will enable you to respond intelligently to other people's thoughts and arguments. An even better reader can figure out how the writer would respond to his or her own responses. And seeing arguments and explanations laid out, and taking them apart to see how they work, will help give you the building blocks for really good arguments and explanations of your own. And of course being able to read technical material successfully will give you the facts and ideas to reason with. So yes, I think you're making a smart move, and I hope it goes well for you.

Good times ahead 4 u. Grow into it. It is the CHEAPEST, SAFEST MOST EXCITING TRAVEL ON EARTH.