The Confessions of the Egotistical Autodidact

So, for the longest time, I've reserved a notebook to carry with me everywhere. I don't remember when I first came up with the idea. But the basics was to always have a notebook with me, and a pen. Then I was free to jot down any scraps of poetry or observations, as well as what I was doing, or what had happened, or something someone said that I wanted to remember. To all this, I added quotes from whatever book I was reading, and then thoughts about the quotes, or what the author was talking about, and if I agreed with him, or where I differed, or what I did or did not like about the book.
Anyways, I thought I was quite sharp for coming up with this nifty idea to help my already autodidactical habits.
Before I go off to school and more study, Mum suggested that I read a few books she had about how to get the most out of books, and the methods of classical education. I started The Well-Educated Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer, this afternoon, and found that in the third chapter, the author mentions how Commonplace Books could be handy and had been used for hundreds of (possibly nearly two thousand) years to help readers digest and analyze books, and go towards the process of rhetoric (forming one's own opinion based on the analysis, whether in agreeing, or disagreeing, with the author). Well, in explaining Commonplace Books I found that she was talking about my nifty little idea of the notebook that I carry with me everywhere.
At first I was a little disappointed to find that I wasn't exactly the first one to have done this.
Then I realised that I was in company with E.M. Forester and Thomas Jefferson and decided that wasn't such a bad lot, and am happy that at least I was approaching reading and learning from the right angle.
It was just a bit of a hard hit for my egotistical autodidact...