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Note Taking Tips |
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Get your readings done. Be prepared to ask intelligent questions for clarifications in class. If you’ve done the reading beforehand, you’ll actually understand what your teacher is talking about, as opposed to staring into open space and trying to figure out the meaning of Shakespeare's words.
If you haven’t managed to preview the topic for each class, make sure you maximize the time you spend in class. Get on track by reviewing your notes from the previous class while you sit and wait for the class to settle and the lecture to begin. Look at your notebook and know what to expect or at least know the title of what you should have read. Arrive (on time if at all possible) ready to think, and listen, and write (that means with pen and paper). The purpose of taking notes is not to record everything that goes on ("professor pauses to sneeze") exactly, but to record your understanding of what has transpired. Each person’s notes are individual (and non-transferable), based on the selectivity of the note-taker, and what they find most important to record.
Your mind works much faster than any teacher’s mouth - use your incredible speed to understand, to retain and to stay on track. As ideas are presented to you, don’t just scribble like a blind automaton, but try to follow them to their logical conclusions, consider their implications, anticipate what the teacher will say next, devise questions and make connections and associations while keeping up on paper. What we are saying is THINK while you’re in class (a crazy notion, we know). Attempt to stay particularly attentive in the second twenty minutes of the lecture, as this is when most people begin to lose their focus. Listen or watch for verbal and physical cues from the lecturer which indicate the value of what she is saying: transition words, enumeration, summation, repetition, voice inflection, body language and writing on the board (while underlining furiously the Latin term) coincide with key concepts.
The point is to get accurate notes you understand, so any method that achieves this is good. General guidelines include: use a loose-leaf notebook that you can add pages to, number and date each page of notes, leave spaces between ideas, write only on one side of the paper, cross out any mistakes you make while writing, and devise short forms (that you can understand!) for words you use often. Some people prefer the Cornell Note Taking method (divide the page by a vertical margin into one-third/two-thirds, one side for headings and the other for details), while some use a mind map to create a visual representation of the lecture. Both of these, and others, are viable techniques, but plain, old-fashioned notes work, too. Just make sure you can understand what you wrote when you review them a month after taking them.
Finally, review your notes as soon as possible after class. Sit down for ten minutes, look over them. Add anything you may have missed, but that may have stuck in your head. Revise headings underline the important stuff, write down questions or clarifications in the margins
Make your notes user-friendly for later so you don’t have to ask yourself, "Did I write these? What did I mean?"
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