<p>So in high school, I found that I could either write fast, or I could write legibly. Is there any way to find a nice balance between speed and legibility? Should I just find a way to write and practice it until it become natural? Also, should I brush up on my cursive? I'm just worried that I'll try to take lecture notes and not be able to keep up...</p>
<p>All it takes is time and practice. Also, if you have a hard time keeping up, try abbreviations to condense all the information that’s being flung at you.</p>
<p>Here’s my big tip #1 for college:</p>
<p>You don’t need to write every single thing the professor says or writes or is on the powerpoint or anything. If you find yourself writing 3 pages of notes for a 2hr lecture you are writing too much. Spend your time in class following the professor and trying understanding the material, write down what you can’t understand at the time. </p>
<p>Many instructors (most in my experience) will have class notes or powerpoints or book chapters or academic papers or something online for the class. Print those out, take them to class, and make notes. If they don’t have those but the course follows a book take the book. </p>
<p>Personally I have never had a class with no online notes and no book. If you do have a class like that then I don’t know what you should do. This should however be a slight minority of classes.</p>
<p>@Vladenschlutte: I looked up my professor for Intro to Philosophy, and apparently 100% of the class is lecture (no books, no power points, etc.) But thanks for the tips :)</p>
<p>What kind of philosophy class has no books? If it has no books guaranteed the professor will provide you with papers. You’re not going to have a philosophy class where there is no reading.</p>
<p>Sorry, I meant no textbook. I’m sure there are books.</p>
<p>I had to teach myself cursive in second grade (because of a move from state to state), and I just practiced constantly. I don’t even print anymore. It’s faster to write in cursive with notes because the word is connected, instead of disjointed like it is in printing. </p>
<p>I would just practice a lot. I still find myself writing out the alphabet in my weird Victorian handwriting:)</p>
<p>If you can read what you’re writing a day after you wrote it, then go with what works for you. If you’re a fast typer, you might even consider taking a laptop to class and typing notes. </p>
<p>&, as a philosophy major, I can tell you that your class will have books. You are expected to bring the book being discussed to class, so you can take notes in it. </p>
<p>My notes tend to follow an outline format (I bullet, make indents, etc.) and that’s helped me differentiate topics when I review my notes. </p>
<p>Just go with whatever floats your boat. If you do the reading and have a grasp of the major topics, your notes should only consist of NEW topics and points that the teacher is touching on in class. It’ll take a few tries before you become comfortable with a style.</p>
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If you came out of one of my math classes with 3 pages of notes after 2 hours of lecture, you missed at least half of the material. </p>
<p>Yes, if you get powerpoint slides, don’t copy down the slides. If you are in a social science or humanities class, you can probably jot down the key points and be fine. However, in classes where you do care about all of the details and the details are not easily accessible (e.g. powerpoint slides or a book), you do want to write them all down.</p>
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That’s generally good advice. I personally found that it also helps me to jot down brief reminders of the points I am comfortable with because I forget a lot of details [and by details I mean some of the key points] in the two months between the reading/lecture and my final paper.</p>
<p>As someone who miraculously survived high school with atrocious handwriting, I agree with the idea of typing everything in college. It’s so much faster and easier to read/format, and if you’re a bit scatterbrained like me, a laptop is the best place to put your notes because they’re nearly impossible to misplace/lose if you use a simple backup system.</p>
<p>If you’re for some odd reason opposed to using a laptop for note taking, maybe you could take up a form of shorthand.</p>
<p>27dreams; do you find that you still retain a lot of the information when you type your notes? I want to switch over to typing notes for practical reasons, but I’m the type of person who loves color coding notes and actually writing.</p>
<p>I love actually writing my notes, too. That way they’re all together in a nice notebook, and I know I won’t loose them if my computer runs out of battery or completely dies (or does any other annoying thing a computer might do).</p>
<p>I actually retain more information when typing because I color code everything too (and don’t have to worry about what to do if I lose the pen with the purple ink, etc). I even use different fonts, bullet points, letter sizes, tables, images, etc. Whatever it takes to help me remember. It also doesn’t take nearly as much time for me to read over my typed notes because, well, I can actually read them. There are no frayed corners, chicken scratch, ripped pages, scribbled out words, eraser marks, wobbly lines, or anything else to distract me from the content. I don’t really ever have problems with losing my notes on my laptop. I always save my documents after adding to them and e-mail all the important stuff to myself just in case.</p>