Learn how a BYUH student uses physical letters to slow down in a fast-paced and technologically driven-world
In an increasingly digital age, Esmond Poon, a senior in business management from Hong Kong, said sending and receiving physical letters is more personal than other forms of communication like email. Whenever he opens his inbox, Poon said he feels irritated as he is bombarded with spam mail about job applica - tions and hale clean check results, but opening a physical letter does not come with those same feelings. He compared reading a physical letter to the pleasure of reading a physical book instead of an ebook. “The feeling of flipping the letter open. That feeling is different.” A worker at the BYU–Hawaii Mail Center said letter writing is personal because it takes more time.
Poon explained the connecting power of let - ters can serve many purposes depending on who a letter is sent to. One of his business professors said people who write thank you letters after interviewing make a better first impression than someone who did not write one, Poon said. “If you think from the perspective of the recruiter, you actually care about the job, you actually care about the recruiter themself.” On his mission, he said he sometimes received postcards in the mail, and it made him feel cared for.
Apart from the actual written content of a letter, there are ways to customize mail, Poon shared. One of his favorites is letterlocking, he said, a method of folding letters so they do not need to be placed in separate envelopes. He said, “The first impression is nice because you can tell that person probably spent time to think about it. It’s more of a surprise.” Knowing the writer spent more time folding the letter makes him feel loved, he said. “I really appreciate it when people pick different colors [of paper] to make the letters ... Also, you can draw on the outside. It’s fun and it’s giving life to the letter.”
Another employee at the Mail Center said the United States Postal Service is an important agency of the United States government because it serves people that FedEx and the United Parcel Service (or UPS) will not. If someone has an address, even if they live out of the way on an isolated mountain, USPS will still deliver their mail, they said.
Find more folds in the book “Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter” by Dana Dam - brogio and Daniel Starza Smith.