#002 - Orienting in Time

Have you ever wondered why in Soviet schools we were always forced to write the date at the start of our notebooks?

Remember, you wake up at 8am on a cold morning, eyes half-open. And here you are, arriving at school, sitting at the rickety old desk with the damned notebook in front of you (green-lined pages basic) and you don't get it at all, but you always write. In cursive letters:

*Девятнадцатое Сентября* *Классная Работа*

I think they did this so that for our entire lives, from an early age, this structure of time would form in our brains - so that we could orient ourselves in time, so that time would not be a chaotic domain for us, but something structured that we can navigate and coordinate ourselves in, move forward. They also say that when we write by hand, it does things to our brain, neurologically speaking.

Perhaps this habit of writing the date every day was an attempt to instill in us a sense of time and chronology. Makes me wonder, does it still work?