Doo doo doo doo...

That's the Windows start-up sound I hear every once in a while in the library or in class as someone forgets to turn off their speaker. It's a minor anoyance, but it serves as a reminder of just how prevalent laptops are in law school.

One of the most interesting things about law school is the fact that we take notes on laptops. I had always taken for granted the fact that I needed to buy one before school started, and like a good student, I got a nice Sony VAIO about a month before classes started. I guess I owe it to all the movies I'd seen about law school that showed people in class happily typing along on their sleek pieces of technological machinery.

Even after I got here, I never really gave it much thought until I talked to one of my mod-mates, Iris. "Don't you think it's odd that law school is the only graduate school where students take notes on compuers?" she asked me. "Uh... not really... well... maybe? Yeah sort of." I said. Iris (who, by the way, is a complete sweetheart- don't get me wrong) proceeded to explain to me that she planned to take all her notes with pen and paper, and that thirty years from now we laptop-istas would all regret using computers as we suffered from accelerated carpal-tunnel syndrome.

Then I got to thinking. Why is it that law students take notes on computers? I remember as an undergrad that to see someone taking notes on a computer was to automatically brand them an "overachiever" (or alternatively, "freak"). My friends in other grad schools all tell me that it's still rare to see students with laptops. But here in law school, latops are as common as... well, lawyers.

For me at least, I can definitely say that I'm glad I'm typing my notes instead of writing them. Given that my professors put handouts and slides on the web to download, it makes things that much easier. In many cases (like Talley's blazing-fast Contracts lectures), I think it would be physically impossible for students to keep up with the lecture if we were writing them by hand (I don't even want to imagine the massive hand cramps that would result... ever think about that, Iris?).

Perhaps most important of all, if I didn't have a computer at school, I wouldn't be able to write in my blog as often as I do. And I know that for many of you, that would be unbearable. :-)