There is definitely a quality balance to be had between taking notes and understanding, particularly true if you know you aren't going to go back and put in the

There is definitely a quality balance to be had between taking notes and understanding, particularly true if you know you aren't going to go back and put in the proper time to study the notes you made afterward. For an extreme example I had a calculus class where your notes were graded but if you wanted an A you pretty much had to write the entire book section set by hand. It resulted in one of the worst retention rates I had of any class because it was a mad dash to write everything down to get the A and then you had to go back and spend time trying to think about what you just wrote. On the other hand in another calculus class notes weren't graded and I ended up with basically 1 sheet (front/back) with a few notes on things I didn't get 100% or wanted to remind myself of later and then spent 10 minutes outside of class reviewing those to great success.