Writing then vs. writing now

From this week, I have classes every Monday and Thursday, 10.30 am to noon and 3.30 pm to 5.00 pm. Just the past Monday, Sito and I walked to school together :)

And it was during one of the two classes on Monday, when the professor was talking about the final written exam, that a thought hit me.

How different writing has become!

Remember composition? It started with a sentence back in primary school. Then it become a para, a few paras, a few hundred words...

I remember those days when a few quick sketches on a piece of scrap paper were all I had to guide my composition on the actual exam script.

Now? I make my sketches by typing on this page before expanding on them into a full post. Similar? I don't think so. I think my entire thought process has changed.

For a simple post like this, I don't need an outline and I can write more or less continuously. For my long posts, I usually have an outline, but I'll keep editing - add, change, delete, more words, sentences and entire paras. I certainly don't remember having to do so much editing for my compositions years ago!

Maybe I didn't know or think too much when I was a student so I didn't deviate much from my outline, compared to now when I know and think more (although it's a different story whether I think coherently!). But I think it's more likely that I used to have a good idea of what I wanted to write. Now, I have simply become lazy with conceptualising my thoughts and instead taken the easy way out with very, very rough sketches, relying on text editing technology to compose my thoughts. Technology also gives me an excuse to have thought diarrhoea and type every little thing out before organising them together.

It's me feeling stupid again... Sometimes I feel that whatever brain mass I gained from all those years of schooling is useless outside the school. Seriously, who would ask me to prove Pythagoras' Theorem?!

Or just blame work - all that vetting and rewriting ruined me!

* It's feeling-unhappy day though there really isn't anything to be unhappy about.

miso: Say it out loud - P.M.S.