Back to school!

Starting on Monday, it's back to school for me, officially. Kind of. 

I'm enrolled in a copyediting certificate program through UCSD. It's not going to be terribly intensive, I don't think...one class this term, then possibly two per term for three more. Should be fine. In the meantime, I got a new MacBook Pro about a month ago. It's the first Apple computer I've had since college. So I decided to learn more about what that computer can do. I've started to learn the iWork suite through classes on LinkedIn. One down, two (maybe more?) to go. Shouldn't be too bad to do.

September has traditionally been one of my favorite months. I've always, in some way, loved back to school season. And getting school supplies has represented new beginnings for me. A fresh, pristine notebook, just ready to receive a teacher's wisdom laid down in ink or graphite has historically made me excited. As the years have passed, that excitement has waned, but it still exists.

It has been fifteen years since I last did a class of any sort. And in the early 2000s, laptops had begun to at least uncomfortably coexist with the aforementioned pen and paper as the means of learning; nowadays, they are preferred. So the question for me, up until a few seconds ago, was this: do I get a notebook for my first class (grammar lab), or do I purely stick with my laptop?

Then I thought about how I taught my students. Always telling them about how to memorize tricky words by taking pen to paper. Not typing words over and over. But writing them down. And the evidence still promotes using pen and paper to learn best. At least for this Gen-Xer. (Not so sure about  Gen Z, since they've grown up entirely surrounded by computers, and many of them are hardwired to learn that way. It honestly could be that writing may be merely equal, or even inferior, to typing. But that may apply only to those who are not so kinesthetically inclined.)

So. There it is. I should get a notebook for my class. I have texts. I have websites to consult. I will have PowerPoint presentations to watch. And I will have online assignments. So let's complete this, and grab a notebook to take notes down in, so I can learn as effectively as possible. Let's go shopping, baby!