After weighing the pros and cons of a paperless semester, I’ve decided to go almost entirely paperless. The rationale being that each year I use about 500 sheets of paper because I tend to take a lot of notes and print most of the PowerPoint slides for classes. It’s nice to have hard copies, but it just seems like a waste of paper since much of it will only be used once.
My theory is, if we have the technology available then why wait ages to take advantage of it? During this semester, I have set a few limits to reduce paper usage.
1. I may use up to 100 sheets of paper. This is printed or loose leaf. To ensure that these limits are maintained, I have set aside 50 sheets of loose leaf and 50 sheets of printer paper. Paper produced by professors will not be counted toward the overall total because this paper. would’ve been used regardless. For group projects, I will not impose these restrictions on my classmates, but I will encourage less paper usage.
2. Since I have already purchased hard copies of all the textbooks, I will be researching to see how many of these textbooks are available in digital format. In a few weeks, I’ll post how easy or difficult it will be to get this accomplished. Considering the specific major, it may be slightly more difficult due to the specialization of the text books.
3. The iPad I’m using in class will be used strictly for class during the day to reduce battery usage and ensure that it will last though every day. Thus far, the battery life has proven to last a good 2-3 days of heavy usage before requiring a recharge and hopefully it’ll stay that way throughout the experiment.
4. Where possible, my PC, iPad, and iPhone will replace what would have been used with paper. I have already downloaded several apps that will assist in this endeavor, such as grocery lists, coupons and quick notes.
5. I’ll reduce the usage of paper and plastic bags while spending as little money as possible. This is perhaps the most difficult thing to do since there are not many free cloth bags available, but as I’m on a college campus that should not be too terribly difficult to pick up a few free ones every now and then. At this time, I have 2 cloth bags that were free to all students entering UCF housing.
I know for a fact that at least one of my professors will not allow the use of computers in class, but in those cases I’ll ask the professor for permission to use my iPad since it’s less intrusive and doesn’t block line of site.
If additional limits come up, I shall edit this post and date the new info when they are added as well as include them in a post when the limit is added.
