Pen And Paper

You hear a lot these days about being “paperless”. Yes, it’s better for the environment not to have paper copies of absolutely everything, but paper still has its uses.

Take assignment writing. Assignments usually have to be submitted either electronically or as word processed printouts. It is unlikely your tutors will ever see your handwriting as few courses require handwritten material to be handed in. But this doesn’t mean you can retire your pen completely. American study skills writer Cal Newport has written about the virtues of using pen and paper to help you think about your work and plan.

His take on pen and paper is that it frees you from distractions. Most computers come with wireless internet access so you are never more than a couple of clicks away from wasting valuable time on Facebook, online games, or any of the millions of distractions you can find online. But with a pen and paper these distractions are inaccessible. For Newport the act of using a pen and paper to write about your ideas can be more easily combined with getting away from the usual routine – without needing a power source for your computer (even the best laptop batteries will die after a few hours) you have the freedom to go somewhere which you might find suits you better than the library or your own bedroom. Whilst Newport’s suggestion of “the dunes overlooking a windswept springtime beach” might be a little hard to find in Salford, the park on campus on a nice warm day can be pleasant and not too noisy.

Pen and paper works well with revision for exams. Writing down your thoughts can help with ordering them. It also means you can arrange things in ways which are more intuitive for you than laying them out in the rigid columns which form the default settings in Word. Spidergrams and Mind Maps are great ways to revise, and you can use pen and paper to create revision flashcards.

But even just for assignments and dissertations the use of pen and paper to help lay out your ideas can help. You are under no obligation to write your notes in any particular style. You can use your own words rather than the academic language you will need to use in the assignments themselves. You can draw pictures, use different colour pens (a personal favourite) and even fold your paper into unusual shapes. Maybe you can find other uses for the paper whilst you are thinking about your assignment (http://www.origami-fun.com/) – why spend your work breaks (which you should always take, whether using computers or pen and paper) staring at photos of yourself when you could spend it trying to master the dragon’s head. Also, there’s no obligation to write your notes and thoughts on a flat piece of paper, you’ll certainly find your notes are more distinctive if you’ve written them on an origami frog.


An origami frog with the Gibbs reflection cycle helpfully written on its back.

Pen and paper might seem obsolete, but they offer an opportunity to approach working environments, organising ideas, and even breaks, from a new angle. It might give you some new ideas.