What do you do when you sit in class? If the answer isn’t take notes, then you are doing yourself a serious disservice. Learning how to take good, detailed notes can help you to improve your grades and can make studying for exams a whole lot easier during midterms and finals. If you’d like to work on making your notes more useful, there are a few areas where you can look to improve them.
The number one key in having good notes is to actually go to class. While you could likely glean much of the same information from your text, there is no substitute for hearing, seeing and writing it down at the same time when it comes to remembering the material. Your notes from class will also likely include points and examples that are not in your text, and you will be able to ask questions on the spot for anything that seems unclear. While you are in class it is essential that you pay attention and write down what the professor is saying.
In order to take good notes you’ll also need to stay organized. This means having a central notebook or binder where you keep notes for each of your courses. This way, you’ll be able to find any material you need immediately when it comes time to study or to simply review the material. It doesn’t matter what system you use to stay organized, only that you do keep things orderly.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of taking good notes, however, is learning what is worth writing down and what’s not. Try focusing on material that seems the least familiar to you first. Then highlight words, terms and ideas that you think are the main themes of each lecture. Some students even create a sort of outline of the lecture with underlining, symbols and highlighting pointing them to distinct concepts. Work with your own system until you find something that works for you.
Taking good notes isn’t always fun or easy, but it will help you have less work to do later on in the year when you’re feeling overwhelmed by papers and projects. Having all your information in one place where it’s organized will help you get more studying done in less time and could actually increase the amount of material you remember and really learn from your courses this year.
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