There's a Reason They Make You Write It Down

One of my university instructors in interior design once told us that she considered the exam one last opportunity to expose us to the material. This was in History of Interior Design. I've been thinking about that the last couple of days as I've blogged, because writing about ideas is, hypothetically speaking, a useful way of coming to terms with them. I say hypothetically because I have a surprisingly hard time forcing myself to do it. Dave Ramsey describes what happens when you write things down in his book Financial Peace, which was the precursor to Financial Peace Revisited. I assume that he retains these two paragraphs in the updated version:

Have you ever had a problem that you thought you needed the input of someone else to answer? And when you began to tell that person the whole situation you were able to answer the question for yourself? You found yourself answering your own question, leaving the other person wondering why you asked.

This happens to us for a reason. The scattered information in your brain has to be categorized, summarized, and organized very quickly to verbalize it. This clarification of information, which has occurred for the sake of communication, clears your mind and allows you to answer your own question (206).

This is why your teachers, if you are a student, require you to write essays and short answers in the course of your school work. Because if you're made to write about it, you're made to organize and integrate it, making the information, the idea, the concept, yours. Once it's yours, I think the theory is that you're going to do something useful or creative with it. And if you aren't made by your teachers to write it out, their expectation based in the pedagogy may be that you aren't going to do it on your own. I'm a prime example of someone who won't write it out on their own, a problem that takes me by surprise every time.