At the beginning of 2010, just as I was finishing the Ninth Grade, my school announced that they were going make the switch to being a laptop school. This meant that at the beginning of the next academic year, every student was going to be given a fully loaded Macbook. Given that I attended an elite all boys private school in Toronto, their move to keep up technologically with the New England prep schools, all who were making very similar transitions, wasn’t at all surprising. The political motivations behind their decision, however, seemed very inconsequential to me at the time. Because I was almost finished riding my three year old Mac into the ground, the thought of a new Macbook Pro almost sent me into spins. That having been said now that I’ve graduated, I don’t necessarily think that laptops are the best tool for preparing students for college.

While computers are extremely helpful for performing certain task, in my school, they were adopted as an educational tool so quickly and completely that they weren’t used appropriately or efficiently. Even most teachers were hesitant to accept computers into their classrooms in fear of having to face twenty glossy eyed students who were enthralled with their ‘notes’. Although laptops do allow students to access great amounts of material online, store thousands of pages of notes, and draft essays with ease, they aren’t great at preforming simple, necessary tasks.

For starters, because laptops require us to type opposed to write our notes, student miss out on the benefit of memorizing content through physically writing that content down. Furthermore, many word processing documents can’t compare to archaic combination of pen and paper in terms of allowing students to link ideas, mind map, or just jot down asides. Because paper is such a flexible medium, it works better in many situations where the physical limitations of computers are too inflexible to be useful.

Throughout high school, it seemed like everything we did was justified with the idea that it would help us in succeed in college and so when I arrived at Middlebury and three out of my four professors didn’t allow us to use laptops in class, I was shocked. Although I like writing my notes on paper, I think there is a major gap in the expectation of technology in education and the reality. Don’t get me wrong, I love my laptop and I think computers are wonderful but sometimes I think that by always trying to stay ahead of the game, we aren’t able to do what’s best for us now.

In Louis C.K.’s appearance on the Conan O’Brien show, he reveals one of the scariest and most well-avoided conflicts in our lives: the fear of being alone. That mildly soul-crushing feeling that creeps into consciousness in that moment we find no one else around. The vast majority of the time, however, we simply turn to the World of Technology to accompany us; thus completely avoiding the problem. Technology has become our go-to friend that we use to hide from ourselves.

As I have discovered in the past few years, and as C.K. would concur, one needs to let go of technological distractions to experience a present moment with true emotions and to get to know oneself. Learning to be truly alone (i.e. without technology) is especially important in the raising and socialization of children. Louis argues that, firstly, kids need to be socialized without the medium of technology because they need to learn important emotional relations like sympathy and guilt. Behind a computer screen, a child can’t sense the emotional response of someone whom they insult, for example, thus inhibiting the development of interpersonal comprehension. Secondly, he says that children need to develop the ability to simply “sit,” because that is how they learn to be themselves and function as real people. In this way, technology can take away from the development of both social skills and of core identity of self.

The best part, for me, in the interview is when C.K. describes an emotional experience he has while listening to the radio. Bruce Springsteen’s wailing causes an overwhelming feeling of sadness, encompassing his entire emotional experience in that moment, led by a feeling of happiness after having enjoyed the song. That is a true emotional experience.

Though Louis C.K. approaches the subject with a comical tone, making ridiculous claims like 100% of drivers on the road are texting, he has a point. There is something missing when people don’t have the ability to be alone (in the sense that there are no people or technology around). For me, discovery of self has everything to do with a separation from technology. One can learn about an unlimited number of outside topics, connect with friends and family, play games, and discover all sorts of interesting facts with the help of technology, but technology can’t help much (if at all) in the discovery of self. In Louis C.K.’s example, the experience of listening to music and solely doing that is so much more closely related to one’s self and one’s emotions than is listening to the same song while texting or browsing the internet.

Thusly Therefore Henceforth and In Conclusion, you gotta get down to the oh-so-lonely you to find anything real about yourself.

Now I’m gonna go for a walk