All the reasons why people who type in lectures are the worst people in the world

I get it. You're hungover, you've only just crawled out of bed to make it to your nine am lecture half awake, and the last thing you want to be doing is taking proper notes. But let's be honest – you might as well be at home when all you've done is add a footnote to the lecturer's slides, because we all know you're not even listening.

Here is a full list of reasons of why people who type in lectures – aside from those who have a medical reason why they have to, of course – need to go back to the old fashioned pen and paper and admit it was always much better in the first place. Welcome to my TED talk.

The noise

This is probably the worst part. Before the lecturer has even finished saying "Good morning", the dreaded tip tap of keyboards has begun. How is it even possible to be writing yet? There is just no need for an underlined title, sub title, summary, date and border within the first 30 seconds of a lecture. Let me introduce you to the good old fashioned pen and paper – with a margin already in place, ready for your pen to silently glide across the page without the click click click of the mass laptops echoing around the lecture theatre.

Note: if you have acrylic nails on, I have no time for you. Yes they look on fleek, yes they match your rose gold laptop case, no they do not prohibit you from holding a pen instead. Put your laptop away for the good of everyone in the room – thank u, next.

You're doing anything but taking notes

Admit it – I'm right, you're not listening. Most likely you're on some sort of social media, watching a football match or online shopping – shouldn't this be something you do in your own time? If your attention span can't hold longer than 10 minutes without having the urge to check Facebook, you're clearly doing something wrong. Not only this, you're now distracting me too by causing me to read the meme you just chuckled at over your shoulder. In fact, you might even be reading this in a lecture. Shame on you.

Caught in the act

Your notes have already been made for you

There's actually no reason for you to be engaged with this lecture at all. More often than not, your lecturer will be kind enough to make their own notes from the lecture, write in the notes section of the PowerPoint, or if you're lucky enough, have slides detailed enough that you could've sacked the whole thing off and stayed in bed. Adding one text box to their slides or changing some of the font to bold does not constitute taking notes, sorry.

It's impractical

It all starts with the wifi connection. Central? Eduroam? Answer: neither. You haven't got the slides up, you've spent the last five minutes trying to hotspot your phone just to download the PowerPoint, and now you're desperately trying to catch up on what you missed by leaning over my shoulder. Your spell check is going crazy, your grammar is all off, your document is all over the place, and God forbid you have to copy a diagram off the board. One small triangle added and your whole Word document has turned upside down.

We're literally surrounded

Handwritten notes are more personal

Having terrible handwriting is not an excuse. I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were writing a published novel. Your notes are for you and you alone, so why would it matter if you're the only person that can read them? The fact of the matter is, it's far more personal and creative to write things by hand and typing is simply mindlessly processing information that you'll most likely forget as soon as you leave anyway.

Why would you not want your notes to be this aesthetically pleasing?

Mouth-watering stuff

It's scientifically worse for you

I hate to get all technical on you, but multiple studies have actually shown that typing is far worse than handwriting for recalling information long term. According to research, students who had handwritten their notes performed much better when asked to recall information from a lecture 24 hours later. Sorry not sorry. Feel free to switch to pen and paper before exam season hits – you'll thank me later.

To sum up, handwriting wins every time. Don't bother getting in touch to disagree with me because sadly the facts don't lie. Especially if you've typed your strongly worded letter. Did you just miss everything I said?