English Teacher Stefan Dorosz assigned his first essay in his senior Moral Dilemmas elective to be handwritten in class. Over the course of nine classes, students wrote six to eight double-spaced pages by hand, using three classes to gather quotes and make an outline, three to write a first draft, and three to polish their final essay. Students were prohibited from taking their papers home or using computers in class.
Dorosz explained his rationale behind the assignment, “Writing by hand was designed to give students distraction-free time and space to think about the text and think through their ideas. It was designed to free them from feeling pressured to write something ‘perfect’.” On a personal note, he noted that the best papers he wrote in graduate school were those initially written by hand.
As someone who processes information more effectively by taking handwritten notes instead of typing on a computer, I was excited about this assignment, and I was already used to handwriting all of my previous essay outlines.
Writing coherently and cohesively, however, wound up being challenging. It was more difficult to look back on my writing. Also, I couldn’t go back and erase or rewrite sentences as easily as I can with a computer.
Another downside to this assignment was the amount of class time it took up. Rather than taking advantage of class time to engage in conversation or learn new material together, we spent nine classes independently writing—something that could be done at home.
I am used to writing essays on my own time in a comfortable environment; it was certainly an adjustment to write in an uncomfortable chair in a room with 20 other students, sometimes at the end of an eight-hour day.
On the other hand, eliminating the option of all assistive technology, such as ChatGPT or Grammarly, was beneficial. This assignment helped my writing process in ways I did not expect; although I’ve never used AI to help me on an assignment, I have certainly got caught up looking through dictionaries and thesauruses online.
Additionally, I never realized how frequently I strayed from my train of thought when opening other desktop tabs until these were no longer accessible–writing by hand helped me focus solely on my writing and thoughts. Furthermore, I discovered the advantage of writing a first and final draft. Due to the time constraint, I was only able to write a first draft for part of the paper. I noticed my final draft was significantly better, as I could see my original thoughts and then try to improve them.