Last summer when I went to see my family in China, my uncle insisted that he would get me a gift. He originally wanted to get me a drone, but I’m not really interested in those things, nor is it super legal to fly those in Ontario. So he got me an iPad Air instead. Originally I didn’t really know what I’d use it for, but it’d obviously be pretty rude to decline a gift.
So that iPad went pretty much unused for 6 months. During that period I really had no idea how useful an iPad could be for school, since I didn’t exactly have a pencil for it yet. Once I finally got a “like-new” Apple pencil from Amazon, I finally discovered how much better an iPad was compared to carrying actual lined paper in your binder. You get all the upsides of handwriting—better memory retention and being able to write different notation—with the upsides of having a digital device, like clean erasing and copy paste, along with a lot more. When you can immediately condense hundreds of note papers into one singular device, it seems almost bizarre I didn’t invest in iPad note-taking earlier.
Take my organic chemistry notes from earlier this summer for example:
Something about digital notes just has that feel that paper doesn’t. You can highlight in whatever colour you want, without needing 50 highlighters. You can choose to have lined or grid paper, without taking a trip to Staples. Now obviously not everyone can afford to have an iPad or tablet, but I just wanted to show how much of an upgrade it can be, and why I recommend getting one if you’re ever on the fence about it.
I’ve pretty been much using my iPad nonstop for my self-studying this summer, and it’s really been amazing. One of the things that keep me studying is just the feeling of writing on an iPad, it’s much smoother than any sensation you could get on paper, and a hell of a lot more satisfying.
That being said, I still have a lot of calculus to get through, so best of luck to me I guess.