<p>I don't know whether to just listen and absorb, or scramble to catch everything on the board/the professor is saying, or (attempt to) find an in-between. One problem is that I'm a slow writer, but I'd rather not bring my laptop to class.</p>
<p>What is effective for you?</p>
<p>Record it and listen to it later</p>
<p>I find it very helpful to write notes.</p>
<p>Handwriting notes is a thousand times better than “listening and absorbing;” listening and absorbing won’t force you to synthesize the main points (and feel free to skip writing down the littler things), and will leave you high and dry when time comes to start studying for any midterms/finals. Bringing your laptop to class can be a good solution, if that’s OK with the professor. (You can also turn off the internet on it during lecture.) Or, as other people said, record it.</p>
<p>The only way I can learn anything is if I physically write it down. Once is fine, but I do actually have to do that…I’ve been to lots of classes where people just printed out the lecture slides and didn’t take notes, but I have to physically do it in order to have a chance of retaining it. I usually try to get everything on the slides though, and I’ll write some stuff my professor says if I have time. Might not be the best choice for everyone, but it works for me.</p>
<p>Even if it’s interesting, it’s amazing how little sticks if you just listen - I mean, weeks later when you have to write a paper.</p>
<p>Honestly, it depends on the class.
Econ and Accounting, I take notes. Art History and Classical Epics, I take SOME notes, but I mostly listen.</p>
<p>I take notes in all of my classes. In my bio and chem classes, I print out the lecture notes and write down additional things since they intentionally leave things off to force us to show up.</p>
<p>“Listening and absorbing” is the best way for me to pull out my phone and play Tetris or look up funny memes.</p>
<p>It depends on the class. For my math/science courses, I like to capture as many practice problems as I can on paper (mostly because it’s hard to do on the computer if you don’t know LaTeX and/or type fast). For humanities courses, I just take note of the main points on my laptop.</p>
<p>This is probably just me, but I wouldn’t record the lecture. It takes too much time to transcribe again later on. If you can’t catch important information on the fly, you’re going to have a rough semester.</p>
<p>I’ve learned that taking notes from lectures & what the teacher writes on the board IN MY OWN WORDS is the best way for me to absorb info. Because then I can use phrases I’m more likely to remember, and add comments/random questions in-between. You also have the ability to underline or star things that will show up on the test, if you have a teacher nice enough to warn you 
I learned from my developmental psych teacher that you learn better with handwritten notes, as opposed to typed ones.</p>
<p>You won’t pay attention if you don’t take notes.</p>
<p>I take rather extensive notes, even though I almost never go back and look at the notes again. Just the act of writing down information helps cement it in my mind. Generally the form of my notes is as follows:</p>
<p>Large heading stating the thing being covered. Example: “Monotheism vs Polytheism”
-Bullet points for main divisions professor makes in discussing the subject. Example: “Zarathustra”
–Indented list of main key points about Zarathustra, each on a separate line and followed by a few sentences of my own thoughts about it.</p>
<p>I add additional facts of interest, names, dates, quotes, and doodles in the margins roughly corresponding to the areas they apply to.</p>
<p>What this does is it cements the information in my mind and establishes the connections between various subjects, so that I can now remember instantly that Zarathustra was discussed in the context of monotheism and polytheism, along side the Hebrew tradition, and had some tie-ins with Indo-European linguistics that I found interesting.</p>
<p>^ exactly. I almost never go over mine either unless it’s a reference to organize the info in the textbook when I’m studying for the test</p>
<p>I recommend you look at cal new ports blog study hacks for some great info on this topic. I take notes, and then use a highlighter to retread them and pick out the critical parts. In some classes, especially as I got deeper in my major, Iwould borrow a friend’s notes and compare against mine. this was an efficient way of gettingthematerial to sink in, especially if itis a smart friend who writes fast.</p>
<p>If I didn’t take notes, I probably wouldn’t be doing as well as I am. The best solution I’ve found for my Biology class is to view and take notes on the lecture before class (because she just sort of skims through it), then write side notes in the margins in a different color ink for clarification/example purposes.</p>
<p>“I’ve learned that taking notes from lectures & what the teacher writes on the board IN MY OWN WORDS”</p>
<p>This. I look at what a teacher writes and try and put it in my own words. Sometimes I can’t come up with a better explanation, but in general this works the best for me. Taking notes definitely helps me remember things, even if I never look at said notes again. Sometimes they are nice for a quick reference as well; I don’t have to go searching through the book if I know something is in my notes.</p>
<p>shoot4moon, that calnewport blog is awesome, thanks for letting me know. And thanks to everyone else. </p>
<p>Now I have another question: what about taking notes on assigned reading outside of class? Do you highlight? Annotate? Take detailed notes on a separate page? (I’ve been doing the third, but I’m not sure how much of a waste of time it is.) I realize this is an individual thing, but I’m interested in knowing what works for everyone. I never studied in middle school or high school so I’m having to build my study skills from scratch.</p>
<p>Just to give a different viewpoint, I almost never take notes, and I have a pretty high GPA at a school that is well known for being tough. The only times I take notes are in classes that have tests, in which I have no good reference for the material. Most of my classes have textbooks and / or detailed enough lecture notes so this happens pretty rarely. For me, the benefit of remembering more by writing things down doesn’t make up for the fact that I’m much less likely to pay close attention if I’m not occupied by taking notes.</p>
<p>I never needed to take notes in high schoool, but college was a different beast. It took me three years to figure out, but taking notes like mad in class, messy, but inclusive, then transcribing them later that same day into a different notebook in neat, picture perfect summaries worked for me. This was for engineering, and the method let me get mostly A’s.</p>
<p>It depends on you and the class. For most of my classes I would write down main points so that I knew what the professor ha emphesized so that I’d be able to study what would probably be on the test. Math classes I was more likely to try and scribble down everything, and in a few classes (the humanities type) I’d only take very barebones notes.</p>