A highlight of my elementary school days was touring the plant in Birmingham where they made the Subjects Book notebooks. They were made by the Nifty Company – am surprised I remembered that. What a thrill it was to see how they manufactured the notebooks we kids used every day! We watch ed how they made the spiral binding hold the books together. It was almost magic!
These spiral bound workhorses came in bright colors and you could write your name and grade on the outside cover. The insides were ruled with the medium sized line spacing appropriate in pale blue lines. There was a red line for the margin. I think I must still have one around here somewhere – a remnant of grammar school.
In grammar school we carried our books and notebooks in something called a book satchel. They were plaid or solid colored and they had a compartment for pens and pencils.
In junior high, we learned about three-ring binders. They were always covered in blue canvas in those days, and we took delight in decorating them our ink pens. We still had our ever faithful spiral bound notebooks – one for each subject. But by then we were too sophisticated for book satchels.
Our notebooks actually served as our platform for carrying around our textbooks. We would set the books up so that they were two abreast, stacked three of four high on each side. The English Composition book was always the smallest, so it rode on the top. Nobody had book bags or brief cases; we just carried the books around from class to class stacked on our three ring binders. We girls carried them in front of us with both hands (I don’t know how we opened doors). Perhaps the boys, who carried them under one arm stacked the same way, would open them for us. Of course, the theory was that we could stash our books in our lockers and stop by during the school day and pick them up as needed. But somehow that theory didn’t work in practice. We just carried them around all day, quickly reassembling our stack of books right before the bell was to ring for each class.
By high school, our notebooks were thicker because we had more subjects and more spiral notebooks, and we always had to carry around “notebook” paper for essays, homework, pop quizzes and the like.
I really don’t remember doing anything different in college, except that we didn’t always have our classes back to back, so it was possible to go back to the dorm between classes. I have no recollection of a bookbag or anything like that and certainly never a backpack! It was great freedom when you could take one book and a notebook to class.
The notebooks of our college days got thinner lines and they were divided into subjects – so that all of our subjects could be in one notebook. And it seems that in college note-taking became a big deal. There was no way to record lectures and I can’t recall that anyone ever taught be how to take notes. Handouts were rare. Much of learning was regurgitation of what was delivered in lecture format. I wonder if undergraduate instruction is the same today.
In college we were also introduced to the “Blue Book,” a booklet consisting of bound notebook paper with a soft blue cover. We used to have to buy them and bring them to class to use for taking essay tests. With these booklets, there was no starting over or changing your mind and you had to write in ink. In retrospect, it was awful!
In graduate school in 1968, there was more room was personal choice and some tests were even open-book. The whole experience was less about memorization and more about reflection, research and drawing conclusions. Fewer textbooks had to be hauled about. On the whole, I preferred graduate school.
Graduate school led to real life and I became a yellow tablet and file person. In my early professional life, I rarely used a notebook and certainly not any three-ring binders. I wrote everything on yellow pads and gave them to other people to type. I kept files organized in ways that made sense to me and my whole life was sorted into manila folders.
In time, I discovered hanging files, and became a hanging file fanatic. Each company or organization I worked with had different colored file folders. I will NEVER have to buy any more hanging file folders again because I have boxes of them at my storage unit.
A few years ago, I discovered sheet protectors were cheap and I could use them to keep related documents together. They don’t require tabs or labels and if I put them in a three-ring binder I can flip through them in seconds. And when they do have to be saved they can be dropped easily into handing folders.
Today, I made good use of notebooks, filled with projects held together by sheet protectors. For now, they work, but my use of paper is shrinking daily and what I will end up retaining will be very little soon. Today more and more is digital and that is fine with me. I have a speedy scanner that makes quick work of documents.
For those times when I must take notes, I often use a special pen that records while I write. I use something that looks like a spiral notebook, but the paper is specially treated to work with the pen. What magic! I can go back and replay anything I am not certain of. I wish I had, had that in college.
Meanwhile, I see my grandchildren carrying their books around in backpacks. I am sure they would be totally baffled at the sight of a kid with a three-ring binder with a big stack of books on it. I suspect their children will just carry around a tablet computer and no books or paper or pens. Maybe this will lead to a generation of kids with better posture not to mention no bony bulge on the middle finger of whichever hand they write with. I just noticed, my bony bulge is actually almost GONE! I can still write – really I can – I just don’t do it very often.
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