1. In your notebook or on your blog, write a “first thoughts” response: What felt different as you prepared your assignment while writing with crayon? Did you find yourself thinking differently? Did you come up with ideas you might not have had otherwise, or did you drop out ideas because the physical, actual writing was tedious or uncomfortable?
My writing didn’t change at all from what I usually produce because I first typed out my three paragraphs on the computer, then I wrote out the entire assignment on the large paper in pencil to afterwards trace over the letters in crayon. Had I began the assignment first thing with crayons I’m sure the end product would have been totally different (and probably more messy than it is). The work I put into it felt pretty tedious at the time (especially because the crayons I used were not very sharp and tracing the words was time-consuming and difficult), but I did find it interesting how by looking extremely close at the different posters you could tell a lot about the person from how they implemented the crayon “tool” into their work. My “first thoughts” on the crayon project was that it was a little more work than it was worth, but by the end analysis of the posters I found it to be a unique exercise.
2. Look at the different pages of your colleagues. Make a list of the adjectives you apply to the way various pages look. What qualities of the pages suggest the adjectives you attribute to them? Why do you respond to these pages in these ways?
Nearly every poster I encountered depicted the adjective ‘colorful.’ For the most part, the students in the class used the crayons to their full potential, making each paragraph stand out in their own color, using the color to emphasize certain words, and/or using the crayons to create a picture or design. Another recurring adjective on my list was ‘neat.’ Although we were given crayons – a writing implement mostly used by elementary school children – the class still knew that this was a college-level course and the projects still needed to be treated as college-level material. Proper grammar, nicely positioned paragraphs, and sometimes even subject headings adorned the pages along the classroom walls.
3. Imagine a culture with only crayons as writing implements. How would that culture differ from ours? What would that culture be most proud of, or would consider to be signs of intellectual prowess?
A culture that used only crayons would, if anything, be a lot “brighter” than ours. I’m sure writers would use color much more to their advantage (using reds for angry pieces, and blue for relaxing ones). The standard grey and black would probably still be used for government documents and legal papers, but overall everything would pop-out a lot more. The crayon-only culture would most likely prize positivity and creativity. It would be considered intellectual in that culture to employ all the uses of color and the emotions they evoke in a literary work.
4. What general observations about writing implements and bodies do you want to venture, based on your experience of this crayon exercise? What general observations about writing implements and thinking do you want to venture?
The interesting thing about the way I prepared my project is that even though I knew that the assignment was to write out three paragraphs in crayon, I first went and wrote it out using a computer keyboard and a pencil. Because I’m not accustomed to using crayons for school-related assignments (and because there is no eraser on a crayon), I didn’t want to start writing using a writing tool that felt foreign in my environment. It would be very interesting to see how different cultures of past and present use different methods of writing to communicate, and how it affects their ways of thinking.
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