There is no doubt that we live in the age of technology. Everybody uses electronics whether it’s the three year old that you really don’t think should have a phone or those really old people that you would assume wouldn’t even know how to connect to the Wi-Fi. However, recently in one of my classes my professor has banned the use of all electronics, which is completely absurd.

I take Dual Credit classes, meaning that I am enrolled in a class that will give me both high school and college credit as long as I pass. My professor often takes advantage of the time we have and turns the period into an hour and a half long lecture with no breaks, calling people at random (but that’s a completely different column) and absolutely NO electronics allowed.

As teenagers, we are more than likely avid texters, which in most cases has granted us the ability to think fast and type without much thought being put into it. Personally, I can get the most information put down whether it be a laptop or an iPad, but when I am given pencil and paper, I often have to analyze information for longer in order to determine what is most important or worth my time writing. Every student learns differently, some students (like me) prefer to have electronic copies of their work as reassurance that it will always be there when they need it. I don’t believe that it should be the job of the educator to determine what you are- and are not- allowed to take your notes on.  If I am being offered the chance to enhance my education early on, I should at least be able to do it in the way I please, which is where my professor and I don’t see eye to eye.

Not only do I think that it is ridiculous that he is going to bestow such a burden on the class, but he also doesn’t make up for it in organizational ways either. Writing with pen and paper in his class is stressful and often leaves students (including myself) with the anxiety of piecing together pictures of multiple classmates notes who also didn’t get all of the information. My professor is what I like to call a bouncer, in basic definition meaning that he can’t stay on a topic for longer than five minutes, often leaving my notes a train wreck. Likewise, all of his homework assignments and quizzes ARE ONLINE. How exactly does he expect the class to pass if he is teaching us a subject one way and we are being tested on it the way he supposedly “hates?”

It is a valid objection, taking notes on an electronic can be distracting and way easier to copy and paste from a power point into my notes. I get where he is coming from, but knowing we are high school students, who willingly signed up for the responsibility that went along with this class, he should have a little more faith that we will be able to separate our social life from academics. Not to mention that he goes through the course so fast that if anyone were to actually stop to check a text or scroll through Twitter they would miss almost half of the chapter.

If my professor insists on banning electronics from the classroom, he should follow his own rules. He gets to check his phone throughout class and all of his power points are online, so he too should be affected by the things he is instilling on the rest of the class.

Students shouldn’t have to stress about getting information down during class. We have all developed unique ways of taking notes and have managed to succeed. We have the rest of our education in front of us, and small obstacles like not being able to take notes on a computer or tablet will not and should not hold us back.