Note taking strategies

>smart enough to not need notes for pleb classes
>never develop a good note taking strategy because of this

well fuck

>>8928010
I'm in the same place. During high-school i didn't have to do(and didn't do) anything, but i'm too much of a brainlet to ace through uni.
I resorted to just buying the books, doing every excercise in them and asking prof for more difficult excersises

>>8928018
Stupid question, how did you find motivation? By not being stupid excluded

>>8928010
>>8928018
ok then at least there's three of us who could use some help with this

>>8927973
Why do you need a giant column to put keywords in?

>>8927973
my notes look like python programs with hefty use of indentation and short descriptive phrases

>>8927973
Messy notes are always better than no notes at all.
I'm always doing meeting minutes. My notes are a goddamn mess everytime. We usually spend a whole day at the end of the week of meeting to go through the minutes to make sure all the important shit is captured.

>>8927973
Record the lecture and clean them up later as a study exercise.

>taking notes in 2017
>not just staring at the online notes for 24 hours straight before an exam

I've done this all my life and it honestly works.

I dont take notes at all. Sometimes I kinda wish I did but whatever, I get through.

>>8928063
I don't want to be a failure. That's enough motivation for me.
>>8928135
I would definitely appreciate any help on taking notes. Roommate manages B-C with just notes and excercises while i spend pretty much all my time reading textbooks and doing excercises to get an A.

>taking notes at the day and age when universities provide you with complete course and tutorial materials online including verbose exercise solutions and lecture VODs
Kek.

>>8928253
>having to scrub through a video to get that one point you need to review
>flipping to your notes and just reading it off

which one sounds better in a pinch?

I've seen people using One Note in class, seems good for courses that don't need special notation, but I'm a maths student. Is there an option for me besides paper and pencil?

>>8928253
>>8928258
Not to mention you can't ask youtube for an answer to a specific thing, while your professor can explain concepts in many ways until you understand, then you write it down.

just use a highlighter and follow along in the book highlighting only the key phrases, otherwise you'll miss half the lecture while trying to short hand notes.

>>8928253
the act of writing notes helps you remember the stuff better though. i literally never go back to mine after taking them

>>8928166
>His notes don't look like Haskell programs
Brainlet.

I don't know what to take notes on. My lecturers just read from PowerPoint presentations that are made available to us. Occasionally they'll deviate from the slideshow, but they just end up talking about unnecessary details that won't be examined.

>>8927973
I don't know why people bother writing down super neat notes, just read a book. Everything neat and ordered with no effort.
I take notes, but it's just to have some quick references while in tutorial sessions as I don't wanna carry around a bunch of books or a laptop.

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so no one on /sci/ knows how to take good notes?

write out definitions and theorems in full

only do sketch proofs in lectures and try to do them properly afterwards

idk what sciense lectures are like

>>8928261
No

>>8928166
>he doesn't handwrite his notes in TeX and then compile them when he gets home
/!\ BRAINLET ALERT /!\

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>>8927973
Here's my advice.

1. Don't stop writing during the class ever. Record everything.
2. Write tiny. You don't want your hand get tired also you'll obviously get a good overview.
3. Feel free (and this is a good thing) to stop writing what you're writing in order to sync. But always go back to fill what you missed (when you would normally feel like putting the pencil down)
4. Write in a flow. Don't fall for mind map meme or draw lots of arrows meme or even the cornell meme. Definitely don't fall for le colored pencils meme.

Reasons:
1. The key is to focus less on writing itself and focus more on WHAT you're writing. You do this by eliminating the overhead of pondering "Hmm. Is this important? Should I record it?". You simply record everything.
2. Already stated. Note I'm not saying you should write in microscopic font so it's slowing your writing down however smaller is definitely better.
3. This is important. Selectively choosing what to write first keeps your focus up and will give you a sense of what's important even though you're recording everything.
4. Remember the key is to focus less on writing itself and focus more on WHAT you're writing. Mind maps are good for summarizing, not for recording.

After the lecture just review what you wrote (particularily the questions and try to answer them) and also fill in what you possibly missed.
Go home, summarize do the exercises repeat.

>what do you do?
I always vertically split the paper in two and write text in bullet points (no reason whatsoever) and I put equations and diagrams centered bellow the text (makes them stand out). Also I vsplit 3-4 pages before the lecture so I don't do that while writing.
I don't know how to write cursive so I write in print as it's clearer anyway

>>8929450
This is really bad advice. You write things because you find value in reading them later, quickly. Copying everything makes you miss the lecture, not understand shit, and have long, terrible notes that you cant even read effectively. Might as well not show up at all and just read the book.

>>8927973
FUCK Cornell notes. They made us do this shit all the way through middle school and actually graded us on our note-taking, it was so fucking stupid.

>>8929467
>Copying everything makes you miss the lecture, not understand shit
Exactly, if your focus is on simply getting it all down without any thought whatsoever.
Though I specifically said your focus should not be on writing itself.

Writing helps to record your thoughts; Anything that goes through your head should also go on paper which was my point.
The act of writing your thoughts like that enhances memory because you are using both your brain and your muscles.

When you're done with the lecture what you've actually recorded is your entire thought process during it so you can now easily spot misunderstandings or create questions.

>You write things because you find value in reading them later, quickly
Again there is a big difference between mindless copying and writing with a thought.
If you're just copying down you may as well not bother - obviously a book would be much more useful than your notes.
When you write with a thought though it's is really no difference than having payed attention to the lecture except for fact you've captured your whole thought process on the paper which is extremely useful.

>>8929450
This isnt correct, you go to a class to listen to the professor speak since all the notes are usually online ( if you arent at some cuck university )

the things he says are more important than whats written ( just a summary)

>>8929450
the page was kinda funny

>>8927973
Cornell notes are fucking autistic. All you need to do is write clearly and space things in a way that will make sense when your memory of the lecture is gone.

>>8928227

This.

I started doing this in Ochem in addition to more practice problems and went from a B to top score in a class of 300 students

I just tell myself that I'm studying and it feels productive. Then afterwards you have God tier review materials for the final. Do recommend

>>8929098
>tfw the lecturer shows about five different definitions on the board for less than a minute

>>8928157
You don't. Cornell notes are a huge fucking meme some master Jew sold to elementary/high school teachers (read: failures). I've never once seen them used by an intelligent person or advocated for by someone holding an advanced degree.

t. bitter college student that was forced to use Cornell notes and turn them in for credit for two years following a trip my 5th/6th grade teacher made to a conference

>>8928227
>tfw my diffeq teacher explicitly forbade any recording of his lectures, including taking pictures of boards he had written on, the first day of class due to privacy concerns

I have found an autistic not take strategy that works. It requires a few things

Take barebones notes during lecture. Leave space to fill in later. Math? Theorems and definitions and the intuitive parts of a proof. Maybe some examples with a couple annotations on why that example works.

Science: key phrases, like vocab or things that will be on the final. In Ochem, I do key mechanism steps and a few trends.

Then, after lecture, WITHIN 24 HOURS,

Get the textbook, open your notes and read the textbook and fill in on your notes anything you don't understand. Explain why something is true if you didn't get it. Takes like 1-2 hours, depending on how much you have covered. Do this for all your classes.

This seems time consuming, and it is, but it makes your problem setsbans review for finals so much smoother, since you learned it right the first time.

Also studies have shown that if you are exposed to something, you should expose yourself again within 24 hours to solidify the memory pathways. So if Monday you have lecture in physics, on Tuesday, you should go over your notes from that lecture

>>8931138
>its a slides lecturer

write as many as you can then leave a gap to fill in later

>>8927973
I find the physical act of writing down the notes enough to get the information in my brain. I haven't ever gone back to read them after I've taken them.

>>8927973
>add in a line to make a small columun and a big column
THATS WHAT THE MARGIN IS THERE FOR BRAINLET REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>8928261
1. OneNote has mathematical input if you're not poor and have a touchscreen device, but it's shit (it won't even let me draw a = in a fucking equation)
2. You could use pencil paper and scan it in
3. (Elder God teir) This guy in my Electric Circuit Analysis II course had this thing he could write on like paper, and then it would instantly scan into his computer. No idea what it was though.

>>8931163
>3. (Elder God teir) This guy in my Electric Circuit Analysis II course had this thing he could write on like paper, and then it would instantly scan into his computer. No idea what it was though.
there was this autistic guy in one of my classes last year that had a special pen like that. apparently it could also record the audio of the lecture as well

I only write down what I need to remember, and I usually don't write an actual definition or theorem, but have a numbered list, with things like, "Prove X" or "Give the definition of X". When I look over those notes the following days, I go through the numbered list and follow the commands, trying to do everything from memory. I try to do it two days in a row without resorting to a reference, and then another two days, but with two or so days in between the days I follow the commands, to give spaced repetition. I think it is a pretty good method.

>>8931171
I've seen those too. I've never tried one but I've always questioned their accuracy, and they looked bulky. What he had though was like a little chalk board thing. It didn't look like glass, and it was just one color. He just wrote on it with this cheap looking plastic stylus, and then when he filled it up or was done, he pushed a button on it and an image of what he wrote showed up on his laptop. I should have asked him what it was.

Don't write down anything you don't understand. Your focus should be on following along in lecture. Figure out the rest at home/office hours

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>>8928949
This meme. This fucking meme.

>>8927973
If its not written on the board don't bother.

I had a prof once who could write on the board faster than I could take notes... I had to drop that class.

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Third year chemistry undergrad, if that means anything. For lecture notes, assuming the lectures aren't pointless recitations of the textbook:

>always be ahead of lectures during reading.
>read text and take notes beforehand
>follow the lecturer while notating emphasized ideas and difficult concepts. if you get everything they said, you've done the bare minimum
>rewrite notes in well organized, self-contained cliff-notes of the course
>refer to cliff-notes throughout semester

I'm thinking of picking up LaTex for future courses if I can somehow easily integrate diagrams/images into digital notes.

The rest of the learning comes from practice problems and conversing with the material until you become fluent.

My lecturer said that you don't need notes if you understand whats happening. People only write notes to learn the lesson later.

>>8931644
Your lecturer is a dipshit

Take barebone notes in class, and either record the lecture and fill in or go to the textbook and fill in. That way you can pay attention and absorb everything being said as well as get info down

>>8931181
Hey! I know what that it is. Probably a Boogie Board Sync. It's a LCD writer. One of the more expensive ones actually. Pretty similar to writing on paper, but loads easier than carrying it around.

>>8931693
Or just pay full attention to the lecturer in class and go read the book before or after class. If you don't understand it, go to office hours or read the section of the book again. If the book doesn't help, find another one on the subject. Notes seem unnecessary when everything is already written down.

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>>8931151
>>8931174
thanks, i'm going to start doing these

>>8927973
Notes don't matter, but the actual note taking is where you cement your knowledge.

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>>8932230
posting a picture for posterity

>>8928010
>>8928018
>I'm so smart it made me stupid
kill yourselves

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>>8928239
unironically this

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I don't take notes.

My friends record the fucking professor speaking and transcribe it later. They send the transcription to my class's mailing list.

I get full study material tailored to this specific asshole's delicacies for free with zero effort.

>>8932410
Not that, just not used to having to put in effort. Note taking is a skill too, if you've never done it, you suck at it. There are many things missing in the textbooks. Things that, since my notes suck, i have to bother prof with. I just want to take better notes so i don't have to spend all my free time grinding for A.

>>8928261
There was a guy at my uni who LaTeXed his notes during class... That takes a ton of practice though, and you also have to be a fast typer (which is genetic and directly correlated with IQ).