Long ago in days of old, if you wanted to talk to your friends and family in places far away, you sat down to write them a letter. Long ago in one room school houses, students had to take their notes with old-fashioned pencil and paper. Hyperbole aside, sometimes in this new age of technology it seems that these days being so far in the past is truly the case.
The other day my mother became upset upon realizing that she would probably never receive a letter from me the entire time I am in college. I jokingly calmed her with the idea that we had probably thousands of texts back and forth, but I can understand how she feels, and it is not the same.
She told me of how she and my grandmother corresponded only through letters to each other when she was away at school. It helped them better understand each other because while they could write extensive letters to each other, it was the piece of paper that limited the details of life they shared with each other.
This letter writing caused them to pick and choose the truly special moments worthy of sharing. More importantly, now they both still have the letters they wrote years ago to look back on and remember stories from their daily lives that they might not otherwise.
Letters are not the only way that writing things down can help preserve our memories. In school, technology has almost completely infiltrated classrooms nationwide. College and university lecture halls are laden with students clacking away while their heads are hopefully buried in their laptops to take notes, but it’s all too likely to get distracted with Facebook and anything else just a click away.
Many reports have been made in recent years that taking notes by hand improves memory retention for the information we take in during class. If you don’t believe it, scientists have weighed in as well. Still not convinced? What about now.
I am guilty of using my laptop for class notes, but this past semester the majority of my classes had professors who had also caught wind of this gap in results from typing notes vs. writing them, and they declared their classes technology free zones. In those classes, my grades were significantly better even though I put in the same effort—aka time spent studying or reviewing material—as I did in other classes. It is as simple as that.
The last reason I am a proponent of writing things down is strictly personal. I recently stumbled upon an old journal I kept. Every day during the summer I was twelve years old, I wrote down the adventures of my day. As dull as they were, I smiled rereading them and even showed some of my family members how they had impacted me back then even if they did not realize it.
The journal was also quite hilarious, and if you are not able to sit back and laugh at yourself sometimes, who can? If you spend one week writing down what you did every day, in a few years time you will have something to enjoy. So I appreciate the read, but seriously, it’s time to put away your computer and get writing.
