The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
Laptops are extremely useful. It really doesn’t make sense to avoid them.
I pretty much treat mine as my second brain.
Just remember to back that shit up.
Nothing like forgetting your brain on public transport and getting instant amnesia for the past five years.
Title is misleading:
Nick, a philosophy student at the University of Cambridge, stopped using his laptop for university work in the last year of his undergraduate degree. He still types his essays, but lecture notes, revision, and essay planning are all done by hand.
The second sentence contradicts the first:
stopped using his laptop for university work
then
He still types his essays
So basically he’s not taking a laptop in to the lecture hall to take notes etc but is still using a computer to complete his work. Which makes sense as pen & paper in that environment is way more practical anyway.
Yeah, the way he does it is basically how everyone did it even 10 years ago. The tools were mostly the same then as they are now, with the exception of AI and the fact that handwriting wasn’t as big a thing anymore when today’s undergrads were in school. If you have a fluid and moderately quick handwriting, paper notes will typically be easier to take and more useful for revising the material later on.
All assignments are submitted electronically now, and if he’s in philosophy, he will also have to follow formatting requirements like font, font size, margins, and spacing. Practically, he’s doing as much as he is allowed off-computer.
They’re still using computers to do their university work and submit it though. It’s more about them not using a laptop in a lecture hall and using pen and paper instead. That’s not really a big deal considering that’s probably what most people were doing anyway up until relatively recently.
i much prefered writing notes on paper but i’d cry if i had to write an essay by hand, i hope those students aren’t torturing themselves this way
When I was in undergrad I had to write lots of essays by hand. I’d say about every other course in one of my majors had midterms and finals that were a single question essay to be completed in class during the testing period. I figured that was pretty typical.
Not using a laptop because it can distract you is like shrinking your stomach because you can’t stop eating. Oh, wait…
Stop eating? As if I would grasp the concept of moderation.
Restricting your diet and skipping meals is the best way to lose weight.
Higher grocery prices are great motivating factor to skip meals.
You can also overdo that. Stay healthy and don’t stress your body too much. Slow and steady wins the race.
That’s not what being a Luddite means
In your defense, the statement specifies “modern-day Luddite” which compares it to the historical Luddite bands and excludes the first meaning of the Oxford dictionary.
Also, avoiding is not the same as opposing.
What a pedantic (and incorrect) take. Luddite can absolutely mean a person who purposefully avoids technology.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but words can have multiple meanings and take on new meanings over time. Luddite is one of them. This article used it properly.
And anyone who disagrees with me can kiss my linguistics-degree-holding ass.
Yeah, there’s this stereotype that professional/qualified linguistics are like super prescriptive but in reality most either don’t give a shit or are interested in informal language
What does it mean then?
“He goes to the library with nothing but his “pen and paper,” and stays there until his essay is done. “Then I’m free to doomscroll Instagram on my phone without any guilt”
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He doesn’t seem very opposed to technology if he just goes straight home and doomscrolls
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Are laptops really new technology to this kid if they’ve existed for his entire life?
$5 says it’s the “what’s a computer” kid from like a decade ago
“‘laptop’? it’s like a foldable but with half a screen??? and why is this keyboard broken, all the keys move?? how do I get an overwatch skin for it?? this is awful”
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I absolutely love doing everything on the computer and can’t stand writing things by hand anymore. I’ve always learned simply by listening — instructors that force students to take notes were the worst because I would be too busy scrambling to write things down than actually listening and learning.
All of this goes out the window when it comes to foreign language though. I have to do everything old school: textbooks, pencil and paper, and if it’s a non-Latin character set I have to write the same characters over and over for hours.
I realized that when i tried to cheat on a test in school, that when i prepared a cheat sheet, i didn’t actually need it afterwards - that only applies when writing the sheet by hand.
For me I always wrote as i listened, still do often. I rarely read the notes back.
‘Revision’ was just writing a whole new set of notes either from memory or from sources. Then, never reading that set of notes.
Massive waste of paper and ink, but it’s part of how i pay attention. Most of my lecturers did provide printouts of all the slides, but I’d scribble all over them anyway.
Typing doesn’t do the same thing at all for me.
I always take notes, listening shmistening it’s in one ear out the other, reading and writing helps me absorb information much easier, but I never did take notes when we were forced to use pen and paper, once we switched to laptops in high school, I could note down every word because typing is so much easier and faster.
i think its mostly AI that was the problem. we all used notebooks even last decade, you just cant concentrate with a laptop writing notes.
Speak for yourself, I’ve taken typed notes successfully just fine.
I got myself a remarkable after seeing a colleague use one and thinking they were cool. An astonishing price for what is essentially a kindle that you can write on, but that is essentially the entirety of its functionality right there. No web browser, no ebook integration, no keyboard, just a thing for scribbling notes with a big battery life. No distractions.
As such, it’s completely ideal for my work diary, meeting notes, D’n’D notes, maps for games that I’ve been playing, random scribbles, all sorts. Quite a lot lighter than the thousands of sheets of paper that would be required otherwise. Also not as rude as popping open a laptop when you’re meeting someone - they can see you’re just making notes and writing to-dos.
I do that but its actually because I just don’t own a laptop and don’t want to buy one
Good for these kids. It’s a wise move!
I really like this idea, but its difficult. when I used to attend uni it was more feasible but in 2025 all of my courses require online submissions, discussion, and materials. I can rent a laptop from the library, but only for 4 hours at a time. Of course there are desktops, but realistically if you want work from home you need a computer/tablet. That said I still just borrow my partners and haven’t bothered to buy one.
As “someone who gets distracted very easily,” he made the change to reclaim his attention span. Ditching his laptop gave him an environment where “YouTube isn’t around the corner” and he can focus on his reading.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
Reminds me a lot of fellow classmates at my college who I discovered hate online classes because they say they can’t stay focused. So I don’t know how these “luddite” students plan to not get distracted when their job will most likely involve sitting in front of a computer.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
I used to be easily distracted during online lectures yet had little difficulty following live lectures. It’s a fundamentally different experience, for whatever reason.
Also, the attention span has to be trained. And training it by working without a distracting computer sounds like a good idea.
I had the opposite experience, in person lectures drove me crazy as an unmedicated adhder, I’d be constantly chiming in and answering every question, my legs would be going wild under the table and I’d usually be just doing something else most of the time on the laptop. Online is much much easier to listen to and get invested in at your own time and pace because you can be eating or vaping while watching at 3AM or whatever and nobody gives a fuck
Doodle. I always doodled in my notes. Repeating patterns worked for me, because I am no artist.
I am still unmedicated, and method helped me a lot with lectures using pencil snd paper for notes.
Everyones different, I failed my online college courses. In person, I do alright. You may like online better.
But if you’re forced to sit in lecture, fuckin doodle.
Nah, that shit woulda never helped me and I wouldn’t even know where to start and I never have, we had laptops open on lectures so I just wrote small programs about whatever concepts the lecturer talked about but to sit in the same place for 2 hours it was borderline impossible.
After entering the workforce it was just pure torture sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day, I went through like a full character arc from arrogant to humble to desperate to hate at others to hate at self to finally worldly and gradually radicalized against the onslaught of alienation.
I came back for my masters in 2020 and it was fairly sweet all online.
Thankfully now many years later I WFH. Uni is far behind. Haven’t handwritten anything in years, I’m almost curious to try it
sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day
That is exactly why I absolutely thrived in manufacturing. Well, the right type of manufacturing. I’d rather die than work in an office. I lasted exactly one month at my one and only desk job before I had to quit and find something different.
I don’t write often anymore either, but recently tried to write a letter to someone, wow after a few sentences could I notice how out of practice I was. I ‘jot things down’ all the time, but a letter, paragraphs, whew.
I think it’s tough, because many degree jobs are all desk jobs, so it’s like, you want the degree and good money, but the work, doesn’t sound fun. Im glad wfh has helped though, thats great
Attention span is cultivated, so is discipline. Reading about it is theory. Forcing oneself to do it, in increasingly sizable chunks, is praxis. I’m talking to myself here, too.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
And how do you improve your attention span? By not having distractions available to you.
That sounds like he’s just not going to be well adjusted for the modern world where distractions will always be available. You don’t get over a love for a drug by making it unavailable, you get over it by having it everywhere, yet refusing it.
Going to school with a book instead of a phone is way more enjoyable.
Good for them
