All About My Collection of Quotes

 

What a commonplace book is:

These past two weeks I have been creating a collection of quotes in my commonplace book. A commonplace book is a tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages. The concept of these books is to place words worth remembering in a single home; these can be ideas, arguments or quotes typically by another individual. These books are an effective way to catalog pieces of information or inspiration that you may come across in one’s day to day life. There are multiple benefits to keeping a book close by dedicated to things you found interesting. The first is to remember what inspired you. In today’s day and age, there are so many things one sees and learns in a day that it becomes very difficult to remember it all. In an article about how the brain separates important and unimportant information, the authors Sabine Heim and Andreas Keil stated that “Scientists have measured the amount of data that enter the brain and found that an average person living today processes as much as 74 GB in information a day (that is as much as watching 16 movies), through TV, computers, cell phones, tablets, billboards, and many other gadgets…Only 500 years ago, 74 GB of information would be what a highly educated person consumed in a lifetime, through books and stories.” Knowing how much you process in one day can be stressful, but you can decrease the stress by writing down the things you find important right away. The second reason to keep a commonplace book is because it can help one save hours on research. By making notes on interesting quotes in an article over a topic you are writing about, when you begin the writing process you already know quotes to mention and an article that is of use to your research. The third reason is that it helps you find unexpected connections. When writing down things of interest, very different pieces of media can end up close to one another and these connections can lead to inspiration on your part.

What I wrote down:

In my common book I mainly wrote down three types of media. The first being notes on articles read for my English class which can be seen in the images labeled “Figure 1” and “Figure 2”. Knowing that we needed to find information in the provided readings for our upcoming essay really motivated me to look at the articles more analytically. Instead of just reading the articles for a base level understanding, I was taking the time to think about what they authors were saying and jotting down information I found interesting or helpful for a later time. The second type of media I would write down had been quotes from movies or songs which can been seen labeled as “Figure 3”. As a college student who has grown up on technology, I really dislike doing work in silence. Due to that, I either put on music that I listen to all the time which means I do not need to focus on the words, songs that are movie scores or orchestral, or movie that I have seen enough times that I no longer need to pay attention to. As I had some of my favorite movies on, I realized how many quotes are so beautiful to look back on. I mainly wrote down quotes from Studio Ghibli and Disney as they are my comfort movies due to watching them as a child and just how beautiful they look. The last type of media I found myself noting in my commonplace book had been quotes from celebrities which can been seen labeled as “Figure 4”. Due to going on social media more than I probably should, I see a lot of motivational phrases that the celebrities I enjoy most have said. It is nice to hear from individuals who have already found their mark in the world that they believe in you and what you will accomplish, so I have written many of these things down. While doing this assignment, I realized that I like to collect phrases from the people or types of media that I enjoy. I have found what makes me happy and inspires me at this point in my life and I really gravitated towards it when it came to writing down things of interest. An example of this can be seen in the assigned readings for class. I found the most quotes in the articles about memory and forgetting things as well as things to do with children and their learning. Both of these tie together with the fact that I am studying to be a teacher, which is a passion of mine, so knowing how to best help the kids is something I find of interest thus compelling me to write it down.

A reflection:

I have found it very interesting to write the things I have enjoyed directly into a notebook. Normally I save it on social media or take a screenshot on my phone, but that becomes very congested very quickly. By picking what I cared most about made me think why I enjoy certain things and what I really want to remember in the upcoming years. Having to write in a commonplace book has made me more intentional with what I save and write down. I found while participating in using a commonplace book, as I heard things, I found funny or saw things I found motivational, my first thought was “should I put that in my commonplace book?” which is very different to how I normally live my life. Normally I would save someone on my phone without a second thought but now I have to go through about 10 additional steps making me remember the information much more clearly. In the upcoming weeks I will continue to do as I have been, but I will try and branch out. Rather than just quoting the music and movies I know I enjoy; I can see if there are any other genres, I find inspiring that I want to commemorate in my commonplace book. I highly recommend that others try to write in a commonplace book. It takes some stress off your mind about what to remember and you get the satisfaction of looking back at what you found interesting at one point or another.


Source

Heim, Sabine, and Andreas Keil. “Too Much Information, Too Little Time: How the Brain Separates Important from Unimportant Things in Our Fast-Paced Media World.” Frontiers for Young Minds, 1 June 2017, kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2017.00023#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20measured%20the%20amount%20of%20data%20that,cell%20phones%2C%20tablets%2C%20billboards%2C%20and%20many%20other%20gadgets.


Images

Figure 1
Figure 1

Figure 2

















Figure 3


Figure 4





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