By: Minh Nguyen, Staff Writer
I still remember August of last year when I first got my iPad for school. While everyone else was still using those clunky notebooks, I was on top of the world with my digital notes.
Little did I know that when school started this year, it would be harder to find college ruled paper than to find Santa himself. In Bishop Gerber Science Center, iPads are everywhere now. It is astonishing how it only takes one summer for about 70 percent of the science student population to switch to digital notebooks on iPads.
I remember last year when not many people had iPads, and it was always a stunning sight whenever someone pulled one out. Most people that I have struck up a conversation with about the iPad could not stop talking about it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love taking notes on the iPad. It is quicker, much more cost effective, and effortlessly portable. It also holds all my textbooks, reading requirements, and last but not least, my movies.
But over time, writing on iPad is not at all comparable to writing on an actual piece of paper. The satisfaction of a pen rolling out ink on a blank space is not easily explained and mimicked by the modernity of the iPad. In fact, there is something poetic and dramatic about every word written with a pen.
I truly miss the feeling of writing on paper, from the sound of clicking pens to the very texture of paper. To me, writing on paper allows you to look back at your errors and learn from them rather than just tap on an undo button to make every mistake magically disappear.
There is something so uncanny yet familiar about writing on a piece of paper after spending so much time with the iPad. In the end, I could not stop wondering: Is the iPad a note-taking revolution? Or are we simply craving conformity?
PHOTO: Courtesy Photo, Unsplash
