As I prepared my assignment while writing with a crayon, I felt it was physically very difficult to do so. The last time I had used a crayon was years ago, and when I had used one, it was not for writing. I felt the friction of the thick crayon against the paper with every stroke. Quite frankly, it was distracting and made focusing on the assignment at hand more challenging. While slightly bothersome, this interesting assignment did have one advantage. The only beneficial effect the crayons had was making my essay more colorful and engaging. While more aesthetically pleasing, my handwriting was atrocious. I did not find that using a crayon to express my thoughts made me think any differently. My creative energy was no more elicited than when I use a standard pen or pencil. Writing with a crayon was tedious and tiring and it prevented me from wanting to write more. When writing, your thoughts come alive onto paper. This transfer of ideas must occur in the most simple of ways to facilitate this process. If the physical process is made more difficult, it interrupts the instinctive nature of writing. The writing process becomes more deliberate and and the thought process is slowed down. I felt I was thinking too fast to properly record my thoughts. This made me repeat my thoughts over and over in my head. I became frustrated and allowed this negative emotion to interfere with my subsequent thought process. You should not have to think about the actual process of writing when you are writing. You should focus only on your content and let your ideas flow straight onto the writing medium.
A culture with only crayons as writing implements would become accustomed to using them for the purpose of writing. It is likely that this culture would not be as frustrated as I am when using a crayon to write. Their writing would also be more colorful than ours is. They would not be able to erase their mistakes. In order to correct their mistakes, they would either have to start over or cross it out. They would have to work more carefully on there work.
Writing with a crayon made me feel like I was reverting to an older time, even though I grew up in a generation of modern technology. It brought me back to thoughts of when I was in kindergarten doing assignments in crayon. While reverting to a state of childhood may be comforting in many instances, I felt that reverting to a state of childhood while writing a college assignment was counter-productive.
I prefer writing with pen or on a computer, rather than with a crayon. Observing the posters around the room, I noticed that depending on the colors people chose, some stood out more. Posters with bright colors brought on positive feelings. In addition to focusing on writing correctly, I also had to focus on writing properly with a crayon. In the end, crayons offered no benefit over a pen or pencil. This is not surprising given the fact that they were not created for the purpose to begin with.
