Been spending hours in front of a blackboard today. At first it was just to get a bit of practice for Monday, doing your derivations on a board is very different from doing them on paper. But it didn't take me more than a couple of hours to decide that I like blackboards better. When I write something on paper it has a feeling of permanency, so I try to do too much in my head to make sure I don't make mistakes and have to erase. On the board nothing's permanent, a swipe of hand, sleeve or forehead removes mistakes without a trace so the process of building the formulae becoms much more... alive? fun? something like that. I wonder if I can find a nice big second hand blackboard for my room somewhere, that'd be neat.
Surfboards, skateboards, snowboards, wakeboards... bah! none of them can come close to the rush of surfing the dark green expanse of a clean blackboard when you're on a roll, leaving squiggly wakes of crip white chalk. And really, which sounds cooler? snowboarder or blackboarder? See? QED.
Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it is much more rewarding than working on paper and I now totally understand why none of my lecturers ever use the whiteboards.

Listening to: Caravan - Nine Feet Underground/Nigel Blows a Tune/Love's a Friend/Make It 76/Dan