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I wish I'd figured out earlier that for me taking notes in class is completely useless. Actually, it's worse than that, it's counterproductive. I spent two year
by StefanKarpinski 13y ago
I wish I'd figured out earlier that for me taking notes in class is completely useless. Actually, it's worse than that, it's counterproductive. I spent two years of college scrambling to copy down what professors had written on the board 45 seconds before, hoping that some day I'd look at it again and it would make sense. I never did. Finally, I stopped taking notes and started just paying attention to what the professor was saying right then. What a difference. I always knew what was going on and remembered almost all of it. I realize that different people have different learning styles so this doesn't apply to everyone, but good god do I wish I hadn't wasted so much time on note-taking – and even more, I wish I'd just been watching the professors and listening those first two years.
- rdtsc 13y agoThe key for me was summarizing and paraphrasing what was said. Just blindly copying didn't work. It was also helping me concentrate better on the content. I had to pay attention to professor and had to understand most of what was said in order to correctly take my style of notes. There was definitely something about using pen and paper rather than typing. Typing didn't work nearly as much.
- NoodleIncident 13y agoIn my case, at least, I literally cannot hear or think as clearly when I try to multitask by taking notes. Unlike Stefan above, though, I figured this out before high school.