This past week we had a history mid-term examination.  I must say that I have not had to write without interruption for 80 minutes, with a pen and paper that is, for quite some time.  I needed every second in those 80 minutes in order to answer the questions.  All two of them.  I could smell our papers burning as the clock ticked on.  I know I wasn’t the only one feeling this as this picture was posted right after the mid-term to our Facebook group: 

The comments that followed were all in support of this picture being a great representation of OUR last 5 minutes.

Now why do I bring this up on my blog?  Well during this flurry or writing I found myself reverting to the shortened online writing style of abbreviations.  I found myself having to pay attention more than I’d like as a way of avoiding this, however, I did find it difficult to keep my train of thought going at the same time.  Which brings me to the question: does post-education promote this skill as much as it should?  I mean, having the computer and being able to reshape our ideas instantly is really great and all, but when it comes to good old fashioned writing are we failing?

I think of all the times that I write.  I write to take notes (generally another shorthand method) I write to…………………well I don’t write all that often and if I do it usually is shorter than the standard 160 characters allowable by Twitter and text messaging.  A quick post-it, a sentence or two in my notes for class.

When it came to writing this exam I found it difficult not being able to “backspace”, I found myself having to scratch out my use of abbreviations.  Now I’ve read a few articles on this topic and found that this doesn’t seem to be a problem for children in school.  Is it because they have grown up with this parallel language?  I do believe that writing with pen and paper serves a purpose.  It forces us to formulate our thoughts into a clear and coherent way PRIOR to scribing it.  When we use computers/technology we are constantly involved in this process and therefor develop only a short attention span to the structure and outline of our thoughts.  I couldn’t imagine writing a 20 page paper by hand; I could however, imagine that we would have better writers and thinkers as a result.  Some may disagree but that’s ok.

I also draw on the point that due to the sheer amount of information we had to spew out and the time frame we were given that maybe naturally my brain adjusted to a quicker way of communicating what I was trying to say.  As the ideas built up waiting in line to meet the paper I found urgency start to kick in, coinciding with the use of abbreviations and shorthand notes.

That’s all for now!