Classes are fantastic -- they offer us just over an hour to observe our fellow undergraduates. During my observations, I have recently discovered that a bilious subculture exists within our own intellectual community. This is a group of people so despicable, so vile, and so loathsome that I cannot bear to speak their names. Yes, my dear readers, they are the classroom laptop-users.
With a heavy heart, I'll admit that I'm a college-ruled notebook man, for better or for worse. Yes, this poor Luddite sacrifices the benefit of perfect mechanical handwriting, the wonders of your widgets and your Wikis and your diddles and humgizzards -- you know, all of those fancy Mac applications that let you buy that cute girl across the room a drink via some Robot Bartender (I tend to fantasize wildly about your virus-free universe, Apple owners).
You lavish in your android luxury while I sit in the corner and watch the kid sitting next to me doodle nipples on the two Os in his last name. And there he is, the classroom laptop-user, never bored, always focused intently on the amniotic glow of internet access. And I cannot help but watch.
Here's my usual thought process watching a laptop-user in an especially boring class: "Look at you tickling the keys during class, all collegiate and handsome ... I just know I could get good volume like yours if I could look up Cosmo hair tips on the Internet right now ... Ooh, he's Blitzing his girlfriend ... What's this? Her Ben Wa balls are missing?!?! ... So that's what they do at Amarna." And on it goes.
The presence of laptops in the classroom presents itself, even in a hyperbolic example, as a mixed blessing. How do they benefit students? Clearly, those who type faster than they write, who feel a need to excise mistakes immediately, who feel the urge to hear the click of a keyboard while they write -- they benefit tremendously from laptops. This, of course, includes those with learning or visual disabilities, who benefit from computer programs immensely. The Internet also gives teachers a group of researchers at their fingertips -- eager beavers ready to look up the Battle of the Bulge or the Earl of Rochester's STD on a whim.
Yet the technological age brings with it a series of questionable additions. For some teachers, the computer is a scary, daunting beast, one that will eat discussion board threads and munch on unsaved files, a Charybdis of binary destruction. Computers, therefore, offer a new excuse for late work, incomplete assignments and mental breakdowns. Wikipedia undermines reputable research. But most blatant is frequent abuse of the Internet for personal entertainment. This often draws the attention of nearby students who intentionally leave their computers at home to avoid distraction -- to save themselves from ruin in the interweb of celebrity wet T-shirt photos, online poker and lolcatz.
Even more importantly, laptops give certain students an undeniable advantage. If participation is a significant amount of a class grade, then the disparity is clear. If a certain student has the world of knowledge at the click of a mouse, whereas my Internet is the mesh of Neanderthal fiber optics in my skull, then clearly I will look like a fool in comparison. I am the John Henry to your steam engine, Mr. Laptop -- I will die trying. And while I know that all students are required to have laptops, that shouldn't mean I must suffer a disadvantage if I find them inimical to my classroom efficacy.
One professor this summer allowed students to use their computers on quizzes. As a stubborn notebooker, resistant to the distracting influence of laptops on my learning, I never brought mine. Guess who knew which Greek god had an epithet of Bromios? The kid who never went to or paid attention in class, but who had the wonderful Internet on his side. And when I'm looking for jobs, that jerk in sweatpants takes it from me and I'm left playing with my pencil (go Wiki "Freud"). That is, of course, if classics-based jobs are still flourishing in this economy.
Ultimately, laptop abuse is really part of a bigger problem at Dartmouth -- the lack of academic zeal. But that, dear readers, is for another column. Now go look at lolcatz.
