Browse Exhibits (1 total)

When's the last time you've written something down? Not for class or an obligation of some kind, but for you?

Once we graduate high school, we graduate from pen and paper to laptops and iPads. Most college students do everything on their computers, you won't find many who do notes or much of anything else by hand. It's even rare for someone to ask for a sheet of paper and a pen (even more so for a pencil), where it was the exact opposite in high school. As Yancey says in The Museum of Everyday Writing: Exhibits of Everyday Writing Articulating the Past, Representing the Present, and Anticipating the Future, "...some of these everyday texts seemed anachronistic if not foreign..." Handwritten things have become a rarity, foreign even, so this exhibit consists of the rarities I've found in my own home and beyond.

As I collected these, I've come to find out that they can fall under two categories; "For Me and Friends" and "For Strangers". "For Me and Friends" is the category of handwritten moments meant for me personally or someone close to me, all in a positive light. "For Strangers" is the category of things I've stumbled across in my time on campus that have been neglected or left for other people or things. All of the exhibits included can be considered as scraps, which are known for their " decontextualized, fragmented nature." according to Koupf in Scrap Writing in the Digital Age: The Inventive Potential of Texts on the Loose. Obviously, there are nuances to all handwritten things but the ones I've collected can be categorized into those two.