Time flies. It’s almost been one year since we were introduced to our task friends with an old book. At first glance I didn’t really get what this is all about. Well I just started studying back then how should I know what to expect? Nevertheless the task woke my interest. How should one be able to evolve a relationship to an old dusty book? Will a task like that be useful for the future concerning my studies? Will it be an easy task to fulfill or will it just be annoying? I think now I can relate to all those open questions which suddenly came up.
It all started with a random book title given to each of us. I didn’t have any idea about the age of the book, the content, the author and even where to find it. This changed quite quickly due to our first task where I had to research these facts. Still after that I just knew a little bit more about it, not enough to elaborate kind of a relation to the book. I simply knew some of its details but never actually encountered it in person. This led to our second task where I had to encounter my book for the first time. I was kind of nervous due to the fact that I will be holding an ancient piece of history in my hands. Anyways I went there with the right amount of respect which someone needs to have when encountering something like that. An elderly guy brought the book on a very special pillow, he put it on the table and left. At first I didn’t really want to touch it I just gazed at it for some minutes. Then I started to feel the book, to smell it and to leaf through. I was very concentrated that I don’t damage it in any possible way. After about half an hour of analyzing, touching, feeling and smelling I closed it and gave it back. While doing all of this one really forgets the facts that it’s just an old dusty book. It becomes something very unique and let’s say precious even though it isn’t my book. Furthermore I had to analyze more backgrounds of the book to find out if there are other editions, translations or reprints. This was rather difficult because I didn’t know how to research for a task like that. You can’t just type it in the internet and look it up you kind of have to dig deeper than usual. After that I had to focus on it’s content, describe its composition, its illustrations and its presentation overall. Like that I was able to generate a small but nice package of knowledge about my book all those steps led to it. In a final task we were asked to relate our books with others out of the sight of our authors. Thereby we went back in time and started to connect with each and other to synthesis our knowledge in a different form which actually led to an interesting conversation.
Now that I have talked about the journey I had with my book I can make a short conclusion. At first it seemed to me like a useless and nonsense task. But then I really started realising the importance of dealing with something like that over a longer amount of time. Nowadays we mainly strive for more and faster flow of information. Which lets us forget the importance of a closer look at a certain action or thing. If we always focus one several things we will end up in a mess and we will start to forget what really is important to us.