<p>After taking finals, I realized the importance of good notes and how they can really help jog your memory about you learned months ago.</p>
<p>My notes are horrible, my writing closely resembles chicken scratch and all the stuff I write down is very very disorganized. Some of the stuff I write down is incoherent when I try and figure out what I was trying to explain.</p>
<p>I was wondering if anyone has a special method for taking spectacular notes like color coding things with different colored pens or highlighting things or putting tabs on some pages or whatnot. Someone has to have a note taking system that they use for lecture and section that works well. I'm very eager to learn!</p>
<p>I know that most girls take amazingly neat and organized notes, any tips especially from the ladies?</p>
<p>i’ve noticed that a lot of people take the time during lecture to color code things. i think that would help in some ways, when going back over the notes. I just feel that doing that would distract me from the actual lecture, so i don’t do it.</p>
<p>I switched to typing up my notes because I just couldn’t keep up organizing AND taking notes, and I’m too lazy to go back over my notes and reorganize them (though that’d be a great way to rehash the material).</p>
<p>The downside of typing is that I also had wireless. Ironically, my note-taking dramatically decreased. ;)</p>
<p>When writing, I try to use differently colored pens to highlight categories or emphasize particular terms. I then flag the page because it has a “term” and do my best to separate things with a couple extra spaces in between concepts and the like. It works best with a highly organized professor who proceeds in a logical fashion. Without that, it’s going to take a lot of leaving space, coming back to it later, etc. </p>
<p>For the most part, it’s just about making use of the infinite space you have. With a computer, you have to stop and change font size, color, etc. With handwritten notes, you could write a really huge heading and write other little things around it, cross it out, underline it, circle it, etc. Take advantage of all of these things and use markers that will indicate to you what’s important – for me, bold letters and colorful symbols help a lot.</p>
<p>This works horribly for humanities classes, by the way, which is why I abandoned it. I managed to graduate from Cal without learning how to effectively take notes in a humanities class. I don’t think I even know what I would write down.</p>
<p>Some of the strategies I learned in debating class/flow drills:</p>
<p>First you come up with a list of abbreviations and/or symbols for frequently used terms. but you gotta be consistent and stuff. For example, vc for value criterion, neg for negation or negate, draw a flower for environment etc. </p>
<p>Second you never write the vowels, only consonants, that would allow you to write faster. you only need consonants of a word to recognize it anyways. </p>
<p>Use different colored pens for important terms or for organizational purposes. </p>
<p>I also find cornell notes to be the best kinds of notes.</p>
<p>In my math classes, one spends the entire lecture copying down in incredible fury the notes, and then deciphering them later, if the professor’s notes are worth taking down (for instance, if the professor is incredibly organized). </p>
<p>If the professor ain’t organized, I just get what he/she covers down, and look up references later.</p>
<p>I was thinking of getting one of those tablet pcs that allow you to write directly on the screen and they have neat features that let you manipulate your notes and organize everything digitally. However it seems like those tablet pcs are not worth it because it’s not as easy and precise to write on it as paper.</p>
<p>The leaving out vowels is an interesting idea, though I imagine it tks sme tme to gt usd to, ds it nt?</p>
<p>my one piece of advice would be to NOT copy down what is on powerpoint slides if the slides are available on bspace or something. this sounds obvious but i always see coutless students do this. </p>
<p>i try to write down things the professor says that clarify the main bullet points to the power point. i prefer doing this on the old fashion pen and paper just because i tend to get distracted with my laptop :x but not everyone has my lack of self control haha.</p>