I have started school again. This semester, I am taking Intro to Philosophy, Health, and Intermediate Algebra.

The Philosophy class is rad. The teacher, Mr. Dill, is this old wiry guy with long gray hair in a ponytail who does tai chi. He’s really interesting, and the class is a lot of fun.  I’m one of only about five people who actually have anything to say in the class; everybody else sort of just sits there and takes notes. Or just sits there.

Health is a slight joke of a class. We spent the first two weeks of class focusing on stress and depression. It depressed me. I will be thrilled when we move on to something else. And also thrilled when we stop or tone down the, “ok, break into groups of about four!” thing.

But math class. Intermediate algebra. Math 127. Now there’s a class. It’s five units, which is sort of a lot. There’s a lot of homework involved. And a twelve-pound book. I’ve begun making copies of the pages that are assigned rather than lug the book around, and that’s made my life much better.

But what’s really made life better is finding the perfect pencil. Here it is:

The best pencil is actually a two-headed-beast comprised of the Mirado Black Warrior and the Mirado Classic. I don’t think that either one is particularly great, but the two together make it so I can just buckle down and do math, and not worry about or think about the pencil I’m using. It cuts down on the distractions a bit. Amorphis, Testament, and the last two Machine Head albums on the iPod help cut down on the distractions a lot, too.

Generally, I carry three of each pencil in my backpack for class and doing homework. I also carry an Exacto Sliding Doors Sharpener for when I’m at the school library doing homework. Because I like to sit next to the windows where natural light can come in, using the library’s sharpeners means a three minute break while I walk to them and back, plus they don’t work too good, and chew up my pencils.

I also carry a Pink Pearl eraser for when I’ve botched a entire problem. Christopher, my brother in law, once said that a pencil is only as good as its eraser, and I think he’s right. A pencil is only as good as its eraser, and once the eraser is done, we both toss the pencil out. You see, that motion memory is important; When I make a mistake, I want to be able to just flip that pencil, fix it, and move on. However, if I use my whole eraser rubbing out a fifth of a page, then my erasers have a much shorter life, and therefore my pencils do, too. So I keep the large rub eraser for the big cleanup jobs.

Lastly, I only use yellow paper for doing math, as it keeps me more organized: when shuffling through papers, I know that anything printed on pink is for health, blue is for philosophy, and yellow is math. No confusion. This has the added benefit of, when retrieving my papers in class, all I have to do is walk up to the front desk, grab the pink set, and walk away. No hunting for my name, alphabetized toward the end.

So what makes these two the best pencil? Well, I have three criteria for comparing.

1. How it feels in the hand.
2. How well it holds a point.
3. How likely it is to smudge.

My brother in law’s favorite pencil, the California Republic Palomino feels better than either of these two in the hand, but it doesn’t hold a point worth crap. It’s immediately a round, mushy point, and is unusable.

The Dixon-Triconderoga, a triangular pencil, feels great in the hand when you first pick it up, and writes pretty good and even holds a point alright, but the triangle shape makes my hand fatigue far too fast.

The standard Dixon-Ticonderoga is a stellar work-horse pencil, but it’s of a slightly lower quality than either of the Mirados. This makes it an excellent back-up, but I don’t like to rely on it for doing ninety minutes of math homework. That said, I did buy a case of 96 of them to donate to my daughter’s 2nd grade classroom.

What I really like about the combination of the Classic and the Black Warrior is this: They both hold a point really well, feel very nice in the hand, and don’t smudge very much. Further, the Black Warrior is round, and the Classic is a hexagon, which means that by switching back and forth, I avoid fatigue. Also, since the Black Warrior is a #2 pencil, and the Classic is a little harder, being a #2½, they require different pressures, which also helps with the fatigue issue. Lastly, they both come with Pink Pearl erasers, so I get high-quality error correction. This last is really important because I make a lot of errors.

And you know what else? They’re both really inexpensive. Around $2 for a dozen means as soon as I start to run low, it’s easy to scrounge up some change and go buy a new package.

By the way, I’ve used mechanical pencils, and it’s my opinion that they all suck. Well, maybe not all, since I haven’t tried all of them, but I’ve tried a lot, and so far, they’re all crap. They never feed the right amount of graphite, they break too much, and when you’re all done with it, it goes to a landfill. Wood pencils are, by and large, biodegradable, and the simple act of sharpening and erasing turns most of a wooden pencil into dust, which is far better than the manufacturing process involved in making plastic pencils, and then throwing them away. Plus, the plastic is generally too slick, and they’re too hard to hold.

I think that’s about it: Mechanical pencils suck, wood pencils are better, we know why one pencil might be better than the other, and why two pencils are the best pencil. We know about sharpeners and erasers. Well, I didn’t get as much into sharpeners as I could have, but maybe I’ll fix that in the comments later. As always, thanks for reading! I hope you go to your local, huge office supply store and pick up some great pencils for use in your math class. Take care!