A Note On Notes

The other day, I took notes on my iPad for the first time.

I know, I know - I'm super late to the party. I feel like that might have been the first thing most people in this class did with their iPad, what with the whole "let's try to integrate these things into our academic lives" thing that we were all so excited about at the beginning of the class.

But I, with my eternally stubborn tendencies, couldn't do it. I am a writer. When I take notes, I write. I enjoy the physical feeling of writing - the movement of my hand, the pen sliding smoothly over the page - almost as much as I enjoy what I write. I like my handwriting. A lot of the time, I write down nonsense just to feel myself write the way some people tall just to hear themselves talk. Taking notes is the perfect outlet for that - I have an excuse to write endlessly for an entire class period without stopping. It doesn't really matter if I'm interested in the material or not; I just love taking notes. I know, it's weird. It might be just a vanity thing. Whatever. What I'm trying to say is, from the very outset of this class, I was determined not to let the iPad take away the joy of note-taking from me.

After Timothy Morton came to class two weeks ago, though, I found myself thinking about the iPad differently. He talked about his use of it with his students and the use of it in his personal life, and seemed to be largely singing praise of it - why should we renounce something, he seemed to be getting at, that is so clearly intended to be used for our convenience, so clearly intended to make academic life (and indeed home and work life) so much simpler and quicker?

On Wednesdays, after this class, I have another class with Dr. Schaberg and that particular day, Timothy Morton made an appearance in that class as well. Perhaps it was an attempt to impress him or something, I don't know, but I decided to take my iPad out and take my class notes on it - just for one day.

My fingers didn't stop moving for the entire class. I found that I was able to type pretty much as fast as people in the classwork were talking - an approach I usually attempt with my handwritten notes, but at which I rarely succeed. I felt I was able to type on the iPad even faster than I would on my own laptop. This was especially curious to me. I spend a good chunk of every day on my laptop, and have done so since I got it in high school, so I assumed that my extensive "training" there would make it the instrument on I'd find myself most efficient. Not so. Maybe it's because I don't have to press any keys down, or because I've become adjusted to the iPad's autocorrect and therefore pay less attention to what I'm typing, but I'm like a damn speed racer on this thing. As a result, I found when going over my notes that there was a much more comprehensive representation of what had gone on in class, and I found myself recalling and even understanding better the discussion we'd had, as opposed to looking at scattered half-sentences and marginal notes and trying to remember what I meant by them.

Even in the face of all that, though, I'm still not convinced. An aspect of taking my notes on the iPad that really irked me was the fact that my notes were suddenly separate from my readings. I like to take excessive notes in my books. It's visually easier for me that way to link together thoughts I have with specific areas of the text. Not only that, but over the years I've developed a pretty intricate system of underlinings and markings to indicate specific relationships, linkages and auxiliary thoughts of mine in relation to a text. With notes on the iPad, that disappears - it's just a block of text, arbitrarily organized by thoughts as I have them, and I have to have the iPad set out alongside my book, attempting to pinpoint which notes belong to which sections instead of just having them integrated into the text itself.

For now, I'm working on finding a balance between the convenience and the comfort. Much to my own surprise I've continued use of the iPad as a place for note taking, but I still mark up my books just as heavily as before. The iPad doesn't come out while I'm reading, but instead during class discussions where I can create a separate space for the topics we discuss there. It's not flawless yet, but I feel I might be making some progress. Let's go future! Full steam ahead!