It is a bit of an understatement to say that technology has changed the way people study over the past decade. When I first started my university career, I had a Dell Inspiron 600M that I rarely took to class or used to take notes with. I can’t think of many people who did take notes on their computers — my classes were all filled with people toting pens and notepads around. I certainly did, and I still have all those notebooks. It wasn’t until the summer before my senior year, when I bought a MacBook that was easier to carry around than my Dell, that I made the conversion to electronic notes-taking, but even then I still used real books and printed out the journal articles I needed rather than using electronic resources on my computer, and for the most part I still took notes by hand (and typed them up later).  When I wrote my undergraduate honours dissertation, I typed notes out of my primary and secondary sources up in meticulous Word documents and then printed them out because I didn’t like having all the windows I needed open on my screen at the same time.

For my first master’s, I took my notes in class on paper (as did all of my coursemates), but tended to always take my MacBook to the Bodleian to take notes and write down quotes from the books I was studying.  I think I would have continued printing out my typed-up notes if it hadn’t been for Apple’s advent of the Spaces feature in OS X in early 2008.  For those who aren’t Mac users, Spaces allows you to create multiple desktop spaces and spread multiple windows across them.  For me, it allowed me to have each chapter of my dissertation and its attendant notes documents open in their own separate spaces.

Changing spaces: my desk in the Lower Radcliffe Camera reading room in June 2008...

With the advent of the Kindle and the iPad and tiny netbooks, things have changed noticeably and drastically since I left Oxford.  In my new courses, the majority of students seem to be taking their notes on MacBooks or netbooks or tablet PCs.  I’m sure there are a lot of advantages to using computers to take notes, and I’d love to hear some perspectives on this, but I find them distracting and I’m not alone.  Personally, I feel about it the same way I feel about people eating in cinemas: lots of unnecessary and distracting noise, but that’s probably because I am far too easily annoyed or distracted by noises.  Last week I went to lunch with a group of medievalists from around UT, and we were discussing the “wall” that a PC’s screen puts up in front of students that impede discussion.  One of the medievalists told me that she makes students who want to use their laptops sit at the back of the classroom and keeps her TA sitting behind them so that they can ask students playing games or being distracting to leave the class.  There have also been many recent articles we’ve all encountered who say that the use of computers in classrooms to take notes negatively affect a student’s ability to focus and retain knowledge.  I tend to agree — there is a lot more evidence that backs up the argument that handwriting notes makes it easier to retain classroom knowledge than typing, and for me that is certainly true.

But even I am treading a careful line between screen and paper: all my notes for my courses are meticulously handwritten in a notebook and colour-coded with pencils, but I have finally started to get real use out of my iPad for something other than Netflix and Fruit Ninja.

... and my workspace in the Perry-Castañeda Library at UT in September 2011.

I think there are a lot of advantages to using an iPad or similar tablet/eReader in class over using a laptop — aside from my tendency to Twitter in class, the iPad isn’t easy to surf idly or Facebook on like a laptop and so aside from scrolling through class readings or checking the syllabus, I tend not to use it very much and concentrate more on taking notes.  The iPad’s biggest advantage for me is that the reading materials for my classes are (blessedly) mostly articles that my professors are kindly providing through Blackboard, so I’ve started using my iPad to download them into iBooks so that I can easily access them in class or read them on the bus.  It’s a system that is really working out for me and allows me to “travel light” as I flit between campus libraries, work and class: instead of printing out reams of paper and carrying the physical articles or books around with me, I just need my iPad, notebooks, pen case and bus pass — the inside of my trusty Moop bag doesn’t change from day to day and I don’t have to worry about forgetting anything.

This is a very different brave new world from when I started out at UTSA carrying my pens, binders, notebooks, textbooks and sundries around with me in a giant backpack, and even a very different brave new world from when I was at Oxford and hauling a laptop case AND a carrier bag everywhere.  But in this case I think different is better — it’s certainly meaning fewer backaches!

This post is for and about my dad, my family and traditions, both those that are “mine” and what traditions mean to me in general.

Yesterday was the first day of classes here at the University of Texas at Austin. I worked in the morning at the PMA library and was… oddly disappointed. With a student body population of around 50,000, I expected there to be a lot more hustle and bustle, but the campus was quiet and peaceful in the early-morning heat.

The Tower.

When I wrote recently about why I chose to come to UT, I rather half-heartedly mentioned the fact that I am now the third generation in my family to come to UT. To me, that’s more than just an idle statement and it’s something that becomes more meaningful to me as I listened to the speakers at the annual Gone To Texas (GTT) ceremony.

Setting up for GTT.

I chose to go to Oxford because it was the best place to do what I wanted to do, and I still feel incredibly lucky that I got to live childhood!me’s dream of going to Oxford. When I went to Oxford, one of the things that constantly struck me was the thread of world history that now connected me to all the other Oxonians around the world and throughout that university’s history. I became part of a staggeringly amazing group of alumni — Wikipedia helpfully lists a number of the most famous. The traditions of the university became very dear to me and I relished wearing my sub fusc and reciting the Bodleian Library’s oath.

The University of Oxford crest adorns the base of the Tower.

Many of the Oxford traditions (for better or for worse) stretch back centuries and it still makes me smile to think that for a little while they were part of my daily life. Even at UT, respect and admiration for the world’s oldest universities is prominently acknowledged on the sides of the UT Tower where the crests of the Universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salmanca, Cambridge and Heidelberg have been placed. We may not dress in sub fusc or swear oaths to our libraries, but clearly the dons of UT’s past wanted our university to be part of the list of elite institutions of the world.

The Tower is lit up orange for sports victories and special occasions.

While the Oxford traditions connect me to the thread of the world’s history, the traditions at UT connect me to the thread of my own family. My father and grandfather were Longhorns, as were a number of my other relatives. My dad raised me to be a Longhorn, too, and I remember many walks along “The Drag” with him telling me about all the most interesting places on campus. One of my favourite memories is of going to see the UT college maces on display in the Student Union. Even though I may have taken some of his advice with a grain of salt (“you have to live within five blocks of campus!!”) and although I joke about his finally getting to use that “I’m a Longhorn Dad” bumper sticker, I am glad I’ve finally followed in his footsteps and given him an opportunity to give it. I’m not sure if my graduation from UT will mean as much to him as my graduation from Oxford, but it will mean as much to me.

The Longhorn Band plays the Fight Song.

If my fellow new iSchoolers are anything to go by, it’s very uncool to be patriotic about your graduate school. Perhaps this is a valid way of looking at things, especially since you can’t go just anywhere to study libraries and archives. But at the Gone To Texas evening, I couldn’t help but feel very emotional about the fact that when I walk around campus and hear the 56 great carillon bells playing, they are being rung by the same man who rang them when my dad was a student in the 1970s. Maybe it’s because my undergraduate university was so young and had so few traditions, but I’m thrilled to bits to show my school spirit and have the eyes of Texas upon me. I feel very lucky that the program that is best for me (and best in the country) happened to be at a university I’ve wanted to go to since I was little. Again.

I am proud to be a Longhorn. I’m proud to throw up the horns and say ‘Hook ‘Em.’ I’m proud to continue a family tradition.

Empty shelves, like blank pages, always make me smile.

It’s been a week now since my big move to Austin.  For the most part I’m settled in: my kitchen is unpacked and ready for all those gourmet meals I’m planning to cook (we’ll see how long that urge lasts!) and my clothes are (mostly) all sorted into the closet or chest of drawers.  I haven’t quite worked up the energy to put together the IKEA chairs for my table, but my couch is set up and my TV and AppleTV are ready to stream all the Star Trek: the Original Series (my current TV obsession) in the world.

Even my cat is settling in.  At the moment she’s stretched out full length across the back of my couch, but her favourite place is the small Edwardian “lady chair” I brought home with me from England and which sits now right next to my gorgeous, huge bedroom window.  From her perch there she can look down at the street outside and watch all the people, dogs, birds and squirrels and talk trash about them.

The only things that haven’t emerged from their boxes are my books.  All the shelves are set up and waiting, but the books are still lurking in acid-free boxes.  I really wasn’t kidding when I asked about what classification system I should use. ;)  Not really, I am just kidding.  I may be a complete OCD bibliophile but I’m not THAT bad.

No.  Really.  I’m not.

I’m not sure what I’m waiting for, really.  When I came home from England I threw them all up onto my shelves with no thought and I want to avoid that as much as I can.  My medieval studies and primary texts need to be put back together and my Dumas books need to be carefully dusted and arranged.  But that all requires time and thought and for the moment I’m kind of enjoying the unbridled thrill of potential that an empty shelf gives me.  I can reorganize my books any way I want.  I can put all the Christies together with the Crichtons and then follow that with the Blaylocks or I can alphabatise them.  It’s all so exciting to think about. :)