As college students, we must select our perfect writing instrument. Some of you may prefer your computer to take notes, I prefer to write them out myself — something I consider to be an artistry and comfortingly archaic. I urge you to take the next step by adopting the pen. It is your right of passage, if you will.

Writing with pencil is like writing with stone. Writing with a pen is like writing with clay. Stone is rigid, clay is malleable. You might be thinking a pencil is not as rigid as I am posing. Hear me out: the pencil might be forgiving due to its additional extremity — the eraser — but this extra attachment allows you to forgive yourself too easily. While we must all practice being gentle with ourselves, part of this includes embracing our mistakes.

During my early years in the education system, pens were forbidden in the classroom. Students were not allowed to use this instrument, but teachers had the privilege of writing with the smooth, permanent tool. During this period of my life, I envied my teachers. Writing with pen was a sign of maturity and sophistication through my young, inexperienced eyes.

Having to cope with using a pencil, I determined a discipline to my pencil use. I preferred the classic Ticonderoga #2 pencil for everyday use. Its graphite was buttery and its eraser was plump, seeming to get rid of whatever you wrote, leaving no traces of your written flaws. It truly is a classic pencil.

Upon test day, I would convert to the mechanical pencil for the time being. I simply could not be inconvenienced during a test to get up and sharpen my pencil. The fiery frustration I would feel when the mechanical pencil’s lead would break almost catastrophically interrupted my train of thought during a test.

It wasn’t until I reached high school that I was allowed to use a pen. My teachers encouraged me to use pencil, though walking into the final years of my secondary education, I felt like a grown-up. And grown-ups use pen.

Pens leave your permanent mark on the world. They express your knowledge, your skill, your precision. They voice your oversights, your miscalculations, your omissions. While you can still learn from your mistakes when using a pencil, the pen is much more apparent and forces you to draw your eyes in that direction. The pen does not insult your intelligence, but rather commends you for fixing these mistakes. Your pen and paper are physical evidence of your sweat smudging the ink on the paper, holding your tear drops when you’re overwhelmed.

While there is a selection of different types of pencils to choose from, there is an infinite range of pens to pick as well. Selecting a pen for yourself is a personal statement. You will develop a science to the type of pen you use. Depending on the thickness of the paper, this determines the type of pen that I use. The flimsy, fragile pages of my books need a thin, gentle pen that will not bleed and puncture through their pages. For a thick cardstock, the paper deserves the irreplaceable Pilot G-2 0.7 pen. These pens come in a variety of colors, but I recommend you stick with black. Black pens are classic, chic and sharp.

My sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts, I delved into the department of linguistics and enrolled in a course called “Language Through Time.” During my first week in this class, we learned about palimpsests — a document that is reused or altered while still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. Ink and other faint imprints of the prior text underlies the new written work, preserving the trace of history. Palimpsests are a history of the written word, holding a cycle of inscription. It serves as a conduit for the transmission of information. Palimpsests exhibit that writing takes place in the presence of other writings and demonstrates the evolution of words, grammar, thoughts and ideas. Palimpsests convey the survival of the fittest: which words or phrases will survive and which will die off. I encourage my readers to invest in a pen, cheap or expensive, in order to create your own palimpsests.

Grace Lucey can be reached at [email protected].