Wild Card 1: Daybook Writing

Over the course of this semester and last semester, we have used daybooks to sort of “start the day” in each of our UWRT classes. By watching a video or reading an article, it helps get our minds on the right track for the class and start thinking about what we need to be thinking about. I find this extremely helpful in my daily class as I tend to walk into a class thinking about a hundred other things than the current class I’m in. Like right now, I’m in my LBST 2102 class writing this blog post while I half listen to Dr. Sabol talk about self-determination and new states after the destruction of World War I. And once again, I question how the hell I got stuck in a class thats entirety of the course is focused solely on World War I. See, if this dude required me to sit down and write half a page on reparations of the European nations after world war I when I walked into this class, maybe I wouldn’t be writing a blog post on daily writing right now.

Back in February, we read an article called “On Keeping A Notebook” by Joan Didion. In this article, a woman talks about all the little notes she kept over the years whenever she felt the need to jot something important down. She may not have always written the context or the reasoning for the note. It was just known that at that moment she needed to write something down and she did. She talks about how this was an important part of her life and I think helps emphasize the importance of the written word.

Throughout my life, I’ve always kept little notes and keepsakes of things. I’ve also always kept many different journals scattered about my room with God knows what in them. I’ve always been one to keep things like this with doodles, random notes, stream of consciousnesses, quotes, song lyrics, etc. One of my favorites and the one I’ve actually kept up with over about 3 years is a journal full of quotes. I put a quote that maybe has struck be at a certain time along with the date and speaker. In a way it’s been sort of my journal and a way for me to put my thoughts on paper during times of happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, etc. I don’t know why but it’s always something that I’ve liked and in my UWRT 1101 and 1102 classes I’ve really liked and appreciated how I could incorporate this into my daily writing class.