Yes, the pen trumps the sword, but the glowing, half-eaten apples and tap-tapping in my tutorials suggests that it’s losing the battle with the laptop. Maybe pen and paper are relics of the past and I’m just being a bit nostalgic, but who’s to say that this eruption of personal computers is 100% positive? I think there’s still a lot to be said about ye olde ink on paper.
To me, the key benefits are:
1. No Facebook
I don’t know how many hours I’ve wasted procrastinating on Facebook and other social networking sites. No matter how much I know I have to focus on a generic and incredibly boring lecture recording, the Internet just reels me back in – it’s like an addiction.
Sometimes I just log on to check a thesaurus, then somehow it’s an hour later and I’ve forgotten what the word I was planning to look up even was. Lovely, clear, smooth, lined paper comes with no distractions… unless you’re an amazing artist I suppose!
2. More Concise Notes
Not only does my pen have four colours (that’s right, you read correctly, FOUR) I can also make my pen go ‘click, click’ just like the incessant ‘tap, tap’ of the countless people with laptops in my class. What could you possibly be typing? When you’re on a laptop, it’s easy to type whatever the professor says verbatim, but with a pen you’re usually more selective, which is fantastic for exam revision season.
…or maybe you’re typing lots because you’re working on an extremely comprehensive Facebook message (in which case you should refer to benefit 1).
3. Learning
While I have no actual authority for this statement, I’m pretty sure that if you actually physically write something down, you’d be more likely to remember it. At the very least, if you re-write or type up your handwritten notes later, the double up is great revision!
Enjoyed this post? Sign up for the Survive Law weekly newsletter for more.
Comments