Three cheers for modern technology

I am a big fan of paper. In a kind of a nerdy way. For example, I smell books. (German pocket books smell better than American pocket books; American hardcovers smell better than their German counterpart, but German ones feel better, and my American astronomy book feels nice but stinks - attention, fellow linguistic and language students, ambiguity!)
I like writing with a pen on paper. And even though that might make me look antiquated in the eyes of those well equipped super-students with their teenie-tiny laptops, or pink, green, burnt orange or even tattooed MacBooks who are sitting in class and playing Farmville, I still take notes by hand.
I am okay with that. I can write fast, and even though I don't have a spell check, I am doing good (well, except for that one time when I forgot the 'l' in 'public'...). I write fairly small, so I don't even need a lot of paper. And the best thing is: unless my dog eats my homework, or my roommate sets the apartment on fire with a corndog, there really isn't much that can happen to my notes.

Now, all those well equipped super-students with their teenie-tiny laptops, or pink, green, burnt orange or even tattooed MacBooks who are sitting in class and playing Farmville, are not that lucky, it seems.

By group emails, set up by each course, people can easily communicate with the whole class and ask people for help when, say, they missed class and don't know what's been going on. And a recurring theme of these mails is : "Help, I lost my notes!"

Francine S. from my astro-class writes: "My computer has seemed to misplace or erase them when it shut down the other night. Therefore I lost ALL of my notes. It would be greatly appreciated if someone could send me theirs." Bummer. Of course it was the computer that misplaced them. And it shut down all by itself. No comment.

Similarly, James S. (ironically, his last name is very similar to that of Francine...), also from my astronomy class, writes: "hey...I have been taking notes on my computer... but my roommate 'accidentally' deleted them all when using my computer...I have nothing to study." Well, that is hilarious. Putting 'accidentally' in inverted commas pretty much lets me know that you, dear James, don't believe that your roommate acted accidentally. But on purpose. Bad roommate! Punish him! You should "shoot him on the moon", as we Germans say, and let him make the measurements required for class on location. That would be more exact and you could forget about all the mathematical formualae. And why was he/she using your computer in the first place?

My personal favorite call for help is this one:
Leslie L. from my mythology class writes: "My car got broken into, and all my notes were stolen." I love that one! I can practically imagine the car thief - let's call him Carl, that seems to be a good name for a car thief - approaching an aged Ford Taurus, carefully looking around to make sure there are no witnesses, prying open the window with his crowbar - a car thief needs a crow bar, right? - then staring satisfied at the BOSE-soundsystem and the Tomtom GPS that the studious and well equipped super-student with her teenie-tiny laptop, or pink, green, burnt orange or even tattooed MacBook who are sitting in class and playing Farmville has worked for very hard at her part-time job at McDonald's and during the summer holidays.
But then Burgler Carl's face brightens as his gaze falls on a stack of paper sitting on the passenger seat. He realizes: that is exactly what he needs! His whole criminal career, ignoring rules and laws, living as an outcast on the margins of American society and accepting his desperate situation, prying open car doors and stealing things that aren't his but that he feels should be, all of that suddenly makes sense. All the pieces fall into place as he realizes that fate has taken him here, to the Ford Taurus of Leslie L., to make his suffering and all his trouble worthwhile. He heard angels singing and rays of sunlight emanating from the paper stack as he picked it up and read: Classical Mythology......

I honestly feel sorry for Leslie: she obviously didn't rely on technology that much and still got screwed. But - who knows - maybe her notes on ancient mythology really changed Burglar Carl's life.... She should be glad he didn't take her teenie-tiny laptop, or pink, green, burnt orange or even tattooed MacBook...