The Parchment Pandemic

I am diagnosed with EPU, a serious pandemic. So serious, that even you, your friends, and especially your teachers have it. However, I don't control it, I'm just subject to it. We don't have a choice, but our school does. 

EPU is Excessive Paper Usage.

Public schools, and especially magnet schools, have been improving teaching. Curriculums are changing; new electives are spawning; chalk boards are disappearing. Very quickly everything has been connected to the internet, to the point where human kind is on the verge of virtual reality. According to New York Times, up to 8 hours a day are spent in front of a screen, whether it's the phone, computer, television, GPS, or tablet. Like sleep, that's a third of a human's life. From using electronics we save many materials such as writing utensils, poster boards, and paper. And yet, schools have turned this unavoidable step for technology in the wrong direction.

As a junior at the Center for Global Studies, I have five textbooks, three reading books, and get around five to ten handouts everyday, accumulating around two thousand pieces of paper per school year. If this is true for all my fellow classmates, it's no wonder at least two times a year our school has a paper deficit. Apparently schools haven't gotten the email we're in the twenty-first century. Despite involving power point presentations, reports from online articles, or typing essays, we're ironically printing and using more paper for the class. The only difference between now, and the age before typing, is that students now have a combo of writing paper, and printing paper. It's about time that the Center for Global Studies takes the leap.      

Upgrading to tablets will solve every paper problem. Tablets are cheap, light, and versatile. No more physical textbooks, paper handouts, and potentially no more note taking with paper. Considering the Center for Global Studies is a magnet school, it'll set the standard as the greenest and most innovative school in the Fairfield County. No more handing in the maclab's used paper that others wasted just for you. No more printer problems lowering your grade. No more folders and backpacks functioning as garbage cans for all the papers we use only one day. 

Let's cure our Excessive Paper Usage. Let's switch to using tablets.