Hi there, maybe this is a dumb question, but I was wondering how do you use the coloured page flags, like do you put one per chapter? I see that you use a ton of them in your books and notes and you write stuff on them. Thank you
Hi! Not a dumb question at all - I actually get this question quite a bit, but honestly, I’ve just been procrastinating on providing a comprehensive answer.
I’ll probably upload a full explanation sometime (this year lmfao) here but here’s a quick run down:
Disclaimer: here’s the usual disclaimer along the lines of “adapt it to your own studying style, there’s more than one way to do this, understand that my approach is tailored to open book exams which are content heavy as opposed to your usual closed book systematic ‘textbook based’ exam etc.
Tabs (colour optional) - I use two sizes
Notes (handwritten or typed)
1. Purpose - What type of assessment?
I’ll look to my syllabus to ascertain what type of assessment I have. This will help me decide how much ‘detail’ I want to include in my notes. If its a closed book exam I tend only to tab one side of my notes. If its an open book exam that’s heavily weighted, then I go all out as above.
I cannot stress how important it is to understand how you are going to be assessed, as this will frame the manner in which you will approach the whole note taking and organisation process. See the example below.
I look through my syllabus to see what sections are examinable. Cull anything that isn’t going to be in the exam. Then I note how many topics there are to cover, and which topics are the heaviest. Weight is usually indicated by the amount of time/lectures/classes/seminars dedicated to the topic.
For more complicated units, I draw up a bullet point list indicating the key aspects I need to tab. This will also serve as my “quick reference” summary during the exam.
4. Broad Tabs (Navy edge, Landscape/ Long Side)
Along one side of the page (here, the navy side) I tab the main topics covered in the course on broad tabs.
5. Narrow Tabs (Red edge)
I use these tabs to ‘indicate’ the steps I need to take to answer a question from the corresponding broad tab. For law, these are divided into the ‘elements’ for each action. For my other humanities subjects, usually these are related points in sequential order I will use for an essay.
I write headings on each of the tabs for ease of reference.
In Law, I’m fortunate to have open book exams. However, this means we cover a lot of content, and the purpose of the exam is to see how we can apply that content under significant time pressure.
Given that style of assessment, my notes need to enable me to access information in an efficient manner, and pinpoint the precise issues I need to address. Its about distinguishing the relevant information from the irrelevant.
