I may owe my daughter an apology.

The other day, she proudly showed me the stack of fresh notebooks she bought for her university classes. I smiled, then suggested she might not need them. “You’ll probably want to use your laptop to capture, store, and organize your notes digitally,” I said, picturing the convenience of searchable files and cloud backups.

She just shook her head. “I like handwriting my notes,” she replied.

At the time, I chalked it up to personal preference. But now, after reading Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning in Scientific American, I’m realizing she might be onto something.

But when taking notes by hand, it’s often impossible to write everything down; students have to actively pay attention to the incoming information and process it—prioritize it, consolidate it and try to relate it to things they’ve learned before. This conscious action of building onto existing knowledge can make it easier to stay engaged and grasp new concepts.

So maybe my daughter’s notebooks aren’t a throwback to the past. Maybe they’re a smart tool for her future.

And maybe the next time I think I have all the answers, I’ll take a note (by hand of course).