How I take “neat notes”
I often get lots of questions of how I take “neat notes” for my classes. The simple way to put it is, that is how my brain works, and no two people really can use the exact same style of note taking. My note taking skills have greatly changed throughout my high school career, from not entirely sure of when I needed to write information, to me know having a specific type of paper and format for taking my notes. Currently I uses a hybrid of spider notes and outline notes, and also take a large majority of my notes before even stepping foot into class. So here is some advice for general note taking, and more specifically how I take my notes.
My first word of advice is, every class and person is different, and sometimes your usual note technique needs to be modified from subject to subject. For example while essentially the same method, my calculus notes vary differently from my statistic notes even though they are both math courses.
Calculus is very much a learn by solving problems with some vocabulary and so I needed to make sure my notes allowed me ample space to write practice problems done in class. Statistics, while it does involve actually calculations, is more of a conceptual math relying heavily on vocabulary, so methods needed to be changed to better enhance my comprehension and differentiation of vocabulary words and concepts.
Find the paper that works for you. I know a large majority of people prefer to write on college ruled paper, but for me personally I cannot stand taking notes on this type of paper. Experiment, try taking notes on college ruled paper, wide ruled, graph paper, blank paper, etc. From there see if you like better having everything in a single bound notebook (spiral or composition) or would rather use loose leaf. I personally take all of my notes in a landscape format on graph ruled paper from either a spiral notebook or a composition book.
Now that you found your paper invest in some nice writing utensils. Now I’m not saying you need to go out and fork over $20 on a pack of pens or pencils, just find ones that fit nicely in your hand and have a good ink flow. I highly recommend if you like gel pens the G2 pens, I personally use their blue ink a lot. If you are a pencil person make sure you have a lot of lead if you use mechanical pencils or a sharpener is you're more of a wooden pencil fan. I use a combination of pens with different nib sizes and styles in my notes. Also don’t feel the need to go out and spend money on washi or decorative tape because sometimes that can be more distracting than useful. I also highly recommend keeping some colored pencils with your note taking supplies. You don’t need to go out and get expensive ones, the simple crayola colored pencils in the basic 12 pack that almost every store sells is adequate.
A Table of Contents in your notes is perhaps the most useful thing you can include. I was introduced to this technique freshman year when my math teacher required that we keep one at the beginning of our notebooks. Back then I found it tedious and a pain to keep up with, but as I was required to make them for math and biology I began to see some value in them. All of my note books have a Table of Contents in the beginning and it makes studying for quizzes, tests, and exams so much easier because you can refer to the table and then flip to the chapter/section you are studying.
So now it’s finding the method of taking notes that works for you. If you have a professor/teacher who posts lectures before class print or take your notes before class, it makes it much easier to pay attention in class to the information the teacher says that is not on the slide because you are not trying to write what is written on the board. Use shorthand, all of us have different methods of shorthand, just make sure that you can understand what you are tying to say in them. I have a tendency to use some math/science short hand where I use a good bit of greek letters. Finally re-write your notes when you get home. Re-writing them allows your brain to retain the information better. I always recommend that when you do this even if you initially took 3-4 pages of notes, limit your re-write to one page because you will subconsciously begin to sort out only the most important information and condense the more detailed or broad information making studying at the end much easier.
So in conclusion, remember that every person takes notes differently and that not necessarily will my method work for you. For those of you who want to take your aim at this method have at it and I wish you the best of luck.