Pens&Machine

Gia | 22 | Mechanical Engineering | 3rd Year | Notemaking Addict

[pensandmachine]

How To Write (An Engineering) Report

I took a course called Professional Communications last year, and this is the summary I made on the professional report writing procedure. Although the course I took was designed specifically for engineers and this procedure is meant for engineering reports, I think some of this content could apply to other types of reports too.

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[pensandmachine]

2015 Summary Notes: Engineering Design

These are my notes for the Engineering design course I took during the second semester of 2015.

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[pensandmachine]

2015 Summary Notes: Dynamics

These are my summary notes for the course Engineering mechanics Dynamics from last year.

There are only a few pages, because I eventually decided that my usual notemaking approach wasn’t working for this subject and decided to focus my efforts on doing more problems instead.

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[pensandmachine]

2015 2nd Semester Summaries

Since I was on hiatus during the second half of last year, I didn’t post any of the summary notes I made for the second semester. Although we are almost 3 months into 2016, I will post the summaries from last year nevertheless.

2015 Summary Notebook Cover

This was the cover for my summary notebook last year. I copied the typography off the image I found here.

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[pensandmachine]

My Bullet Journal

First of all: What’s a bullet journal?

At the heart of the Bullet Journal is a method called “Rapid Logging”. Rapid Logging allows you to quickly capture and parse all the different types of data we’re trying to digest on a daily basis. This technique provides insights that can help you identify what’s important and weed out the things that aren’t. Figuring that out will help focus your time and energy much more effectively. It’s the difference between being busy and being productive.

(Extract from bulletjournal.com)

I set up my bullet journal per instructions from the website bulletjournal.com.

Here’s the video from their website:

So here are just some photos of pages from my bullet journal from last year. 

(I have a new bullet journal for 2016, but I think my bullet journal from last year will be more suitable for the purposes of this post.)

Please bear in mind that I don’t really put that much effort into decorating my bullet journal, so it may look rather plain...

INDEX PAGE:

KEY LEGEND

(From tumblr user my-studyblr)

YEAR GOALS PAGE

MARCH MONTHLY EVENTS+GOALS

IDEAS + MARCH DAILIES

FILM REVIEWS

MY FAVOURITE POEM

If you guys have any questions, ask away!

I’ll update this post with photos of my 2016 journal once I have enough (presentable) content :)

-Gia

[pensandmachine]

First Semester 2016: 2nd week

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[pensandmachine]

First semester 2016: 1st week

The long break didn’t do my notemaking skills any favour. I think my notes look a little clumsy...

You’ll notice that my summaries look kind of monotonous with a lot of writing now... That’s because I am now forced to fit a lot more info into my page than I had to last year... The workload has increased so much compared to 2nd year!

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[pensandmachine]

Hi guys

I am finally back from a (really) long hiatus! Although I won’t be able to post as much original contents as before, I will be posting my summary notes every week and will try to answer as many asks as possible.

I’ll be posting my summaries from the past 2 weeks now, and do a post on my new stationery soon!

-Gia

[vhanstiel]

Source

Please don’t delete the source. This infographic is obviously not mine, but since I have never seen it on Tumblr, I thought I should share with you guys. For girls around the world. 

[rebeccastudiesmaths]

Important. Just because you are female doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. One of my friends at uni is female and she got the best marks in first year and then the best marks in second year out of my entire course. Have confidence in your ability! And don’t let the guys put you off.

Also one of my friends (a guy) once told me I only do better in exams because I revise better. Kinda an insult to talent even if true. So yeah, have faith in your ability girls!

(And guys don’t always have the best confidence in themselves, so you guys have faith in your ability too!)

[pensandmachine]

I love your blog. Your note taking is crazy awesome and I want to ask you so much. I'm going to be a freshman in college majoring in biochemistry, and I guess to start I was wondering shays your advice on how to take notes? I used to be one of those who tried to write down everything possible but that doesn't exactly help you retain info. How do you decide what to write and how do you organize?

Hi! First of all, thank you for the compliment! I’m so flattered wow

Regarding my notetaking - I’m the type of person who tries to write down as much info as possible in my lecture notes. Here are some tips that could prove helpful:

1. Pre-read. If possible, read through (or even just skim) the textbook. This way you will be able to recognise the lecture materials that can be found in the textbook and those that aren’t in the textbook. Focus on writing down the things that CAN’T be found in the textbook.

2. Take notes religiously during class discussions. Also, take detailed notes when the lecturer is going through an example. Chances are new material that cannot be found in the textbook, lecture slides, etc. can be introduced during these occasions.

3. Write down what the lecturer says, but rephrase it into your own words. This way, you can gain some comprehension in the process of rephrasing, and often also save time because you can significantly shorten what you have to write down.

4. Use abbreviations and shorthands. Make up your own abbreviations and keywords! As long as you can understand what you have written, it’s okay. For example, I write “diff.” instead of “different”, and “En.” instead of “energy”. This actually does help me save time.

5. Voice record your lectures. This way, when you are lost going through your notes you can refer back to the voice recording.

6. Go over your notes after lectures to identify the things you don’t understand, and the things that need additional explanation. Sort them out ASAP. Leaving them till later will make your workload snowball exponentially! (speaking from experience here)

7. Don’t try so hard to make your lecture notes neat that it slows you down. Personally, I cannot make neat notes in class because my thoughts and ideas are scattered everywhere and disorganised during lectures. During lectures, new info is being thrown at me and I’m often not ready to organise them in one go. So during class time I make notes, focusing on writing down as much info as possible and not caring about how it looks as long as it is legible. Only after class would I organise the info into neat summaries once I have an understanding of the lecture materials.

I hope this helps! xoxo

[pensandmachine]

hi! are the stabilo pens similar to the ones you are using? :)

Yes I believe they are quite similar, from what I hear :) (I must admit I haven’t actually used the Stabilo ones before, though)

[pensandmachine]

do you recommend doing notes for each subject in a notebook or on pieces of papers and combine the papers together afterwards?

It depends on what you prefer, really. Personally I prefer using notebooks because I tend to lose pages or mess up the order if I make notes on separate pages. However I know that some people prefer to use pages and file them, so that they can add in pages wherever they want to later. If you tend to be disorganised, I recommend notebooks. On the other hand, if you like to make notes after lectures and add them in (or you miss a lot of lectures and have to make additional notes later and would like to organise them chronologically), it may be better to use pages.

[pensandmachine]

Philosophy of Mathematics - Summaries

[pensandmachine]

I found this photo in my phone’s gallery.... This was the mindmap I made for physics for my mid-year exam in my first year :) Good old days lol

[pensandmachine]

Happy Birthday! I hope your hard work pays off and that you get a really good mark on the exam :)

Thank you <3<3 

[pensandmachine]

Hello! To the anon asking about sleep, just wanted to share that there was a time when I only had 2-3 hrs of sleep every weekday. I guess adrenaline and great times with my friends were the only thing that kept me going. wouldn't advise it, though! just wanted to share :)

Thanks anon! :)

[pensandmachine]

hiii do you have any tips on how to make beautiful notes on an economic class? (i figured if i made my notes look nice, i'd want to study a subject i don't like) thank you so so much!! <3

Hi!

Unfortunately I’ve never taken an economics class before so I can’t really give you any tips on that :( 

Does anyone have any tips for anon?