#it leaf

So at the end of last semester I treated myself to a Surface Pro 3. Unfortunately, all the pens were sold out at the time (thanks christmas!) but the surface itself was nice. I wanted it to use for school, as it’s quite a bit lighter and smaller than my laptop.

However, after getting the pen, I saw a HUGE increase in my productivity. See, I really do prefer to do things - take notes, do assignments - by hand. I feel like my thoughts flow much better and I focus a lot more. The problem is that you should never trust me with loose leaf paper. It was probably my biggest issue all through elementary and highschool. We were forced to use paper, and I would always lose it. And the issues didn’t end at sheets going missing. I really hated how they would crinkle, or get stained, or other myriad of issues.

Also, when you add together binders from all your classes, it’s so heavy. Honestly, growing up my backpack would regularly weight over twenty pounds. Needless to say, after becoming an adult and going to college, I really didn’t want that anymore. So I switched to being as electronic as possible. It was a trade-off - no more hand written notes, but everything was available at the touch of my fingers and my bag was a hell of a lot lighter. Ran into some issues with my labs though, and I still needed loose leaf paper for those, but it was still an improvement.

With my new set-up though, everything is AMAZING. It’s the perfect combination between digital and traditional - the best of both worlds. I can take notes by hand but everything it stored digitally. Onenote works perfectly for this, but I can also write directly on word and powerpoint documents. Not only that, but I also share my notes with a few of my classmates (thanks to onenote’s share option).This has really come in handy this semester as one of my classmate’s (who is also a good friend of mine) got a concussion during out co-op. She has so far missed two weeks worth of classes, but has been able to not fall so far behind because she gets live access to my notes.

I also just had the idea of doing a bullet journal through onenote!! Which is just incredible. I have access to so many more tools with onenote without having to carry them around in my bag. And once again, weight is not an issue. I can have as many pages as I need without worrying about it running out. I can have pages in a logical order even if it comes to me later. And I can upload any pages or printouts right onto the document and write on them as you would if you printed them out.