Note-Taking Tips

Taking notes is an essential part of college, without them you would fall very, very far behind and they are the easiest thing to help you remember what you have learned. This is the fourth post in my College Blog Series.

I like to hand-write my notes on a piece of refill paper. This way I can write down everything that the lecturer says and fill in the stuff from the slides when I re-write it in my notebooks. When I say write down everything that they say I mean everything. Why? because that way you understand the context of what they are talking about and not just have notes that have no meaning to you in the future.

 I don't care about how it looks because it is more important to get all of the information down. I don't use anything other than a black pen and a pink pen for underlining the titles (sometimes the lecturer goes so fast there isn't anytime to underline in a different color so I just underline it quickly in black to remind myself that it is a heading.

You have to remember that each class is different some lecturers don't use slides, some read off them so you have to adapt your notes to fit in with their style.

When I get home I re-write my notes into one of my notebooks. I know a lot of people don't see the point in this but I am a visual learner so re-write helps the information to sink in for me. 

I like to highlight the examples, people, and dates just like when I am note-taking from a text-book. In the lecture I scribble away the whole time about what the lecturer is saying, this helps to keep me focused on what we are actually learning. I also like to paraphrase what the lecturer is saying, this way I actually understand what it means and don't end up with a bunch of  long technical words. However sometimes these words can mean something, so always write it down if it does.

I have already shared with you the color-coding system I use for my notes. This is a great way to help you find specific examples and key words. Also for studying it makes it easier to remember the points as you can remember back to when you wrote it (is this just me?).

I usually use two pages of my notebook for an hour lecture, if I do anymore I find that it becomes too repetitive and hard to follow, so four pages for two hours and so on. I like to under-lined the title of the lecture, the sub-titles and the date in the color that corresponds to that class.

How do you take notes? Is there a studying technique that helps you a lot?