The Blank Page Still Wins

Pen and paper will not go away.

While trying to grade my students and create more framework, I noticed that I was scrambling to get a pen and a sheet of paper. It is funny because my course is 100% online. There is no need for my students to actually use any type of paper. Yet, I have the necessity to use pen and pen.

For many years, I have wanted to prove that I can thrive only using a digital notebook and system. Yet, solely relying on the digital environment does not actually help me. While many argue that they can survive in a purely digital environment, I am someone who can not. But Gen Alpha might argue differently in the future because they’re the Ipad generation where they take notes on tablets and grow up with it. There are available tools to create paper-like features on their tablet. So, they might be the first generation that can argue differently.

As a creature of habit and routine, nothing beats the pen and the sheet of paper. Even in the age of AI with overflowing retention, writing using a pen is the single activity that helps me with retention and memory recalling. I also think that depends on one’s preferred learning style. For me, I can only remember the things I pen down or otherwise I won’t.

It is similar to concepts I tried to come up with or solving a computer problem. I would write it first and it is actually faster for me to solve it than solely relying on digital even abstraction ideas inside my mind.

So, I believe that pen and paper will stay and will not go away.