6 ms·

Some of us also have terrible handwriting, so taking notes by hand is out of the question. Though I will also surmise that they can also be a distraction.

izacus 9y ago
Why is improving your handwriting out of the question?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deadhead 9y ago
  Its not an option for everyone. I had a classmate in undergrad who had a medical condition where they could not take notes by hand. They even had a doctor's note saying that they had to have a laptop in class.
  - sluggg 9y ago
    True, but Compuguy was not referring to people with medical conditions in my opinion. He is referring to the "many" that don't want make a concentrated effort to improve their handwriting but could if they did. If a student has a medical condition that makes it so their handwriting is not legible then they probably had the same issue in HS and should be able to navigate College bureaucracy well enough to get the exemption status.
    - compuguy 9y ago
      I should of mentioned it earlier, but I do have a medical condition, which a previous poster mentioned (Dysgraphia). I also did "navigate" the college bureaucracy and sometimes had to push teachers to allow use of a tablet or laptop, even with an exemption.
  - scottLobster 9y ago
    Not physically able to use hands != perfectly able to use hands but was failed by their elementary school system and now rationalizes that learning to write legibly is somehow a waste of time ;) Not to be too personal, 99% of college students (including myself back in the day) are lazy rationalizers in some fashion. In my experience it's not until Junior/Senior year that some majors start squeezing that out.
    - izacus 9y ago
      Just remembering the amount of excuses and ways we used to rationalize our laziness in college really makes me cringe :P Most people do grow up tho.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      On the other hand, I had some number of years of handwriting class in grade school (Palmer script) and handwriting was consistently my lowest grade as I recall. It's never been good in spite of considerable practice--and it's slowly deteriorated to almost illegible today.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia There's a very specific part of the brain responsible for the movement planning and fine motor control required for writing. Some folks have it underdeveloped, and need to spend an inordinate amount of effort and concentration in order to write. And even then, their writing will often degrade over time as they fatigue.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Oook, but is that the case with the OP or is it an excuse? Handwriting does require a bit of practice (children usually do it for a few years to get good).
    - balfirevic 9y ago
      It's not an "excuse" because he doesn't have to excuse himself to anyone for his handwriting. He found what works for him.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      I can say that in my case my 6th grade teacher started paying close attention and noticed that when I was trying my hardest to be neat I was doing like my peer at their worst. He had the school counselors do some tests which didn't result in anything other that agreement that I have an inability to write neat. I first head about Dysgraphia 10 right here though - the symptoms a familiar enough for a self-diagnosis, but as all self-diagnosis there might be something else.
      - compuguy 9y ago
        My teachers noticed it in the 3rd grade. I was able to write cursive, but it took me far longer. The result of this is me using a device called an Alphasmart (they stopped making them a couple of years go), through the rest of my education.
    - compuguy 9y ago
      Yes it is.
- problems 9y ago
  I'm in the same situation, my handwriting is illegibly bad, even by myself - the main reason I don't want to improve it is that I just don't use it, haven't for years, it'd be an incredible waste of time and effort. There's no motivating reason to do it except for perhaps some very abstract learning benefit - which hasn't to my knowledge even been proven out in the software engineering or computer science field, where it arguably makes the least sense.
- praneshp 9y ago
  Another bad handwriting guy here. For me, the answer is "I have better things to do". Learning to cut out distractions on a laptop will serve me better (IMO). Although in grad school I never used to a digital method of annotating papers and did it by hand anyway.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wott 9y ago
In 15 years of studies, I have never ever heard anyone complaining about his own handwriting. Even with a handwriting that can be very bad for others, one can always reread 99.9% of what one has written, because it is one's own handwriting and one knows its quirks. This kind of complaint magically appeared after students got Internet-enabled laptops and were allowed to bring them at school. That's bullshit of the same level as "I can take faster and better notes with my laptop". No you can't. You can't draw graphs, you can't draw diagrams, you can't draw small maps quickly and properly as you can by hand. You can't either type fancy maths, physics and chemistry formulas as fast and as "aligned" as you can do do it by hand. "But it is searchable". Wonderful. As if you used to be lost in a 30 pages long course (which has a logical organisation and/or progression) that anyway you have to learn one way or another, by practice or rote memorisation. There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal. Laptop in a classroom are used to play, browse the web and social networks; the rest are made-up justifications to be allowed to bring them.
- ue_ 9y ago
  It's worth first noting that there are indeed people for whom a laptop would be much, much better, due to some disorders which produce very quick pain or tiredness in the muscles from writing, with handwriting that may be unreadable even the next day. Such people obviously greatly benefit from laptops. >There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal. Have you used org-mode? I really like the ability to organise many notes, link them together (like a small personal wiki) and others. Typing is also significantly less fatiguing, at least for my hands, and I suspect at equal or even faster speed, though I have nothing to back that up, I can type at around 110wpm comfortably. Typing notes also comes in quite handy if the course comes with digital material. You can copy that graph in, you don't have to draw it out. Tablet-laptops (if there's a word for them, I don't know it) let you draw diagrams with ease. It may also benefit to record what the lecturer is saying with the laptop's microphone, though you can do that with a separate device, it's more useful and convenient to have that as embedded media in your notes. It also means you can do things other than note-taking. If the course requires some amount of memorisation of facts with definite answers, you can use spaced repetition flashcard programs such as Anki, and fill them in during the lecture, or better, copy-and-paste from your typed up lecture notes. This is especially useful for definitions of things. Whether laptops are used as they could be used is a different matter, and my own lecturers have told me anecdotes of their misusage, though I think it's unwise to stop people who would otherwise use them well from using them. The people who misuse their laptops will find that not paying attention has consequences.

izacus 9y ago

Why is improving your handwriting out of the question?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deadhead 9y ago
Its not an option for everyone. I had a classmate in undergrad who had a medical condition where they could not take notes by hand. They even had a doctor's note saying that they had to have a laptop in class.
- sluggg 9y ago
  True, but Compuguy was not referring to people with medical conditions in my opinion. He is referring to the "many" that don't want make a concentrated effort to improve their handwriting but could if they did. If a student has a medical condition that makes it so their handwriting is not legible then they probably had the same issue in HS and should be able to navigate College bureaucracy well enough to get the exemption status.
  - compuguy 9y ago
    I should of mentioned it earlier, but I do have a medical condition, which a previous poster mentioned (Dysgraphia). I also did "navigate" the college bureaucracy and sometimes had to push teachers to allow use of a tablet or laptop, even with an exemption.
- scottLobster 9y ago
  Not physically able to use hands != perfectly able to use hands but was failed by their elementary school system and now rationalizes that learning to write legibly is somehow a waste of time ;) Not to be too personal, 99% of college students (including myself back in the day) are lazy rationalizers in some fashion. In my experience it's not until Junior/Senior year that some majors start squeezing that out.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Just remembering the amount of excuses and ways we used to rationalize our laziness in college really makes me cringe :P Most people do grow up tho.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    On the other hand, I had some number of years of handwriting class in grade school (Palmer script) and handwriting was consistently my lowest grade as I recall. It's never been good in spite of considerable practice--and it's slowly deteriorated to almost illegible today.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia There's a very specific part of the brain responsible for the movement planning and fine motor control required for writing. Some folks have it underdeveloped, and need to spend an inordinate amount of effort and concentration in order to write. And even then, their writing will often degrade over time as they fatigue.
- izacus 9y ago
  Oook, but is that the case with the OP or is it an excuse? Handwriting does require a bit of practice (children usually do it for a few years to get good).
  - balfirevic 9y ago
    It's not an "excuse" because he doesn't have to excuse himself to anyone for his handwriting. He found what works for him.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    I can say that in my case my 6th grade teacher started paying close attention and noticed that when I was trying my hardest to be neat I was doing like my peer at their worst. He had the school counselors do some tests which didn't result in anything other that agreement that I have an inability to write neat. I first head about Dysgraphia 10 right here though - the symptoms a familiar enough for a self-diagnosis, but as all self-diagnosis there might be something else.
    - compuguy 9y ago
      My teachers noticed it in the 3rd grade. I was able to write cursive, but it took me far longer. The result of this is me using a device called an Alphasmart (they stopped making them a couple of years go), through the rest of my education.
  - compuguy 9y ago
    Yes it is.
problems 9y ago
I'm in the same situation, my handwriting is illegibly bad, even by myself - the main reason I don't want to improve it is that I just don't use it, haven't for years, it'd be an incredible waste of time and effort. There's no motivating reason to do it except for perhaps some very abstract learning benefit - which hasn't to my knowledge even been proven out in the software engineering or computer science field, where it arguably makes the least sense.
praneshp 9y ago
Another bad handwriting guy here. For me, the answer is "I have better things to do". Learning to cut out distractions on a laptop will serve me better (IMO). Although in grad school I never used to a digital method of annotating papers and did it by hand anyway.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wott 9y ago

In 15 years of studies, I have never ever heard anyone complaining about his own handwriting. Even with a handwriting that can be very bad for others, one can always reread 99.9% of what one has written, because it is one's own handwriting and one knows its quirks. This kind of complaint magically appeared after students got Internet-enabled laptops and were allowed to bring them at school. That's bullshit of the same level as "I can take faster and better notes with my laptop". No you can't. You can't draw graphs, you can't draw diagrams, you can't draw small maps quickly and properly as you can by hand. You can't either type fancy maths, physics and chemistry formulas as fast and as "aligned" as you can do do it by hand. "But it is searchable". Wonderful. As if you used to be lost in a 30 pages long course (which has a logical organisation and/or progression) that anyway you have to learn one way or another, by practice or rote memorisation. There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal. Laptop in a classroom are used to play, browse the web and social networks; the rest are made-up justifications to be allowed to bring them.

ue_ 9y ago
It's worth first noting that there are indeed people for whom a laptop would be much, much better, due to some disorders which produce very quick pain or tiredness in the muscles from writing, with handwriting that may be unreadable even the next day. Such people obviously greatly benefit from laptops. >There is zero benefit in typing notes vs writing them down. At best, in an unlikely optimistic case, it could be equal. Have you used org-mode? I really like the ability to organise many notes, link them together (like a small personal wiki) and others. Typing is also significantly less fatiguing, at least for my hands, and I suspect at equal or even faster speed, though I have nothing to back that up, I can type at around 110wpm comfortably. Typing notes also comes in quite handy if the course comes with digital material. You can copy that graph in, you don't have to draw it out. Tablet-laptops (if there's a word for them, I don't know it) let you draw diagrams with ease. It may also benefit to record what the lecturer is saying with the laptop's microphone, though you can do that with a separate device, it's more useful and convenient to have that as embedded media in your notes. It also means you can do things other than note-taking. If the course requires some amount of memorisation of facts with definite answers, you can use spaced repetition flashcard programs such as Anki, and fill them in during the lecture, or better, copy-and-paste from your typed up lecture notes. This is especially useful for definitions of things. Whether laptops are used as they could be used is a different matter, and my own lecturers have told me anecdotes of their misusage, though I think it's unwise to stop people who would otherwise use them well from using them. The people who misuse their laptops will find that not paying attention has consequences.