Mead Releases New Grad-School-Rules Notebook

This was a page in my Onion day calendar a few months ago.  Now that I have been a grad-student for two full semesters I realize this is so true! There is never enough room on my paper.  Looking back on some of my notes now that the semester is over I realize that in some places I wrote two lines of text in one line on my page.  The onion may have some ridiculous headlines, but this one is actually a somewhat realistic and good idea! 

 Richmond, VA -- After decades of only offering rules notebook paper suitable for college-level education and below, school supply giant Mead introduced its new grad-school-ruled notebook Monday, which features lines twice as narrow as college-ruled paper.

"We here at Mead understand that as students get older and wiser, they need notebooks with increasingly narrow lines," Mead CEO John A. Luke told reporters.  "In college, people are at a stage in their education where they require 9/32nds of an inch between each line, which is why we are making college-ruled notebooks.  But I think we can all agree that grad school is a completely different world than college - a world where 9/32nds of an inch is simply too much room."

"How can we expect graduate students to learn to gather information and construct knowledge independently within their specialized field of study using college-ruled notebooks?" he added. "These students need a narrower-lined notebook, and at long last, they have it."

According to Mead's website, the ruling in the grad-school-ruled notebooks will be placed 3.55 millimeters apart, making them "infinitely more practical" for postgraduate work than the 7.1 millimeter college-ruled notebooks. In addition, the standard 1.5-inch top margin normally provided for dates and headers will be halved, and the left-hand margin will be eliminated entirely.

Gone are the days of graduate students having to tediously pencil in new lines between each existing college-ruled line just to make the notebooks usable," the press release read in part. "And with the time you'll save by not having to flip a page every 33 lines, you could earn your Ph.D. a year early."

"When you're in grad school, every millimeter counts," he added. 

-- From my Onion desk calendar - and to darn funny not to remember forever.