This worked very well for me in grad school. Come to class with the mindset that the professor is to be presumed wrong and that the lecture has to defend an id

This worked very well for me in grad school. Come to class with the mindset that the professor is to be presumed wrong and that the lecture has to defend an idea. Ask leading questions and see if the professor takes the bait. The intent is not to play gotcha, but to see if you can get the professor to clearly articulate a point you think is incorrect. (This is in engineering, mind you. From what I've heard about grad school in the humanities, I don't think you'd get very far with even an implicit challenge to the professor's authority.) In the end, you may still disagree with the professor's point, but at least you understand it. With regard to notes, I found the same thing. Take thorough notes in a blank notebook. Disregard printed-out slides or other materials until after the lecture. Rarely return to your notes -- the value is in having written them down in the first place. (Who on earth has the time to rewrite notes?) Note-taking in the real world is quite different. Keeping detailed meeting notes is my preferred strategy for staying awake. In one job, where we had a lot of meetings about the same subject, I did retype my notes, and then I took more notes on the printouts. Then I typed them up again and repeated ad nauseam. By the time I left that job, I had accumulated a 100 page book with minute details and history of our process.