I found a lot of similarities between Sarah’s account of this task and my own; larger, more important pieces get typed up and smaller, more informal ones are done in handwriting. Sarah feels comfortable taking notes on her phone though, something I do not like doing as I am not a great thumb typist and I’m at the age where my arms aren’t long enough for me to see what I’m typing on my phone screen. Where we had our biggest divergence in opinion was in our preference and significant differences. Sarah loves the convenience and speed of mechanization, while I prefer the speed I have with my pen. I also lay out my sentimental reasons of not letting go of a finished product that is in your hands. Sarah has no qualms about this; she loves all the other aspects that computerization have given her:
“Nowadays, when you type something you can quickly personalize the text, correct it, make multiple copies, and share it with others.”
It is this property of the computerization of writing that I completely overlooked. I have found that using Google Docs and Word 360 to be almost God-sends in these pandemic times. Last week, we had five people working simultaneously on a draft letter for our staff and only two of us were located in the school. We would leave notes to each other in the margins by changing the font colour to grab our attention and quickly zoom back and forth reading and editing others’ paragraphs. We accomplished something that would usually take hours, if not a day, with handwriting (or Microsoft Word installed on your computer) in just over fifteen minutes. Sarah reminded me that letting go of the attachment to some writing pieces and allowing computerization and collaboration is a great thing, and I need to do more of that.