The @thestudyingapollo‘s guide to summarising dense and long subjects!!
Hello guys! I’m back to normal posting schedule with something that I had been asked before and that is: how can I turn my big ass dense pile of notes into effective little summaries? Well, brace yourselves because this is something that has saved my ass in more than one occasion, and I’m hoping it will help at least one of you too!!
As you can see in the first picture, I was working on my pathology notes, which is one of the longest and most dense subject at my uni. I had to learn lots of structures, pathologies, test and names, and I was going crazy before I paired with one of my friends and the two of us turned that scary set of notes (seriously, 700 pages for one subject is no joke) into a manageable little pile of summaries, charts and diagrams! Here is the process we followed:
First of all, we worked wit our original class notes. They were dense, so we tried to highlight, following a colour-coding system, the most relevant bits of information. And you may ask yourself: how do I know what is important and what not? Well, if there is one word or sentence that helps you remember the simplest concept you’re working with and construct all the details around it, that’s what you MUST highlight. Doing it like that, you can look at your notes and remember the core of the concept, and work on remembering the rest from that simple concept.
This is no magic trick, you need to work in order for this process to work, but I assure you, it makes difficult ass subject with a lot of material much more manageable. So, don’t leave this for a week before your exam, you will die guys! Working on the notes from your class of that same weeks helps you in remembering what your professor stressed in class and you will identify the essential information much more easily! Of course, if you don’t understand something, look it up, ask your classmates and specially your professor, it’s their work help you understand the material!!!
Doing little diagrams and drawings in your original note will help you in remembering stuff and you can skip all the little details while making your summaries, concentrating only in the important stuff. The basic concepts will help you answer lots of questions in the exam and understand the little details and bits of information much better!
Try to make these little summaries after you have studied each chapter. To keep your notes organised, pick a color for each section: for example, I used orange for the digestive system, pink for the cardiovascular system, yellow for the nervous system, green for the lymphatic organs, and so on. Using bold titles written or highlighted in different colours for each section will improve your memory! Also, using BOLD TITLES is essential, and will organise your memory in little boxes and sub-sections. That way, you will remember the information easily, it will be like opening a Matryoshka doll! Of course, number each section of every chapter. Organisation is the key to success! (look at image number 3)
If there is one central branch of information, use diagrams to organise your thoughts! (just like in image 4). If there is something that refers to that information but doesn’t fit in the structure of your diagram, simply use little sticky notes! Again, use little drawings!!!
If something is too complex or there is a section that has lots of information, try to condense it into a table like in image 5! For example, in the table that you see in image 5, I compared the characteristics of the different types of Lymphoma! I put the different points I need to know of each one, and that helped me in realising the points they had in common and their differences; by doing this, you can learn the info that is common for all of them just one time, and then use your energy in memorising the differences, which is what your profs will probably test you in!
Something important you need to know is that you only need to write IMPORTANT information. Especially in college and university, professor tend to ramble a lot when they’re teaching a class, and that’s why you can’t put absolutely everything in your summaries notes, because this is not a guide on re-writing your notes, this is a guide on how to understand and organise the most important information! The basics of your subject are what are going to give you the most chances to pass, extra details are going to give you extra points, but if you don’t know the basics, extra details are useless! Also, if you have to learn difficult structures, color your drawings (like in image 6), that way you can visualise its different parts when you’re sitting the exam!
Use red or another bold color for essential info! Also, remember that you can fit a lot of info in a single sheet of paper, so try not to over do it! Too many colours can get overwhelming, and using a super duper small handwriting to fit everything in your notes is a waste of time. I know that the summaries in image 7 look super menacing, but believe me, my class notes were much, much worse. It doesn’t have to be super pretty or colourful, you can do extremely useful summaries with a blue or black byro and a couple of contrasting colours. You may think this is time consuming, but there was no way I could fit 700 pages of info in my head in top of three other subjects that were not much better! It also helped me make revision much more peaceful: when I looked at the massive pile of class notes I got nauseous even, but I could take my little set of summaries anywhere around the house and revise easily. Also, since I had already worked on all the info, revising was much easier, because I had already worked with my chapters and tried to understand them as best I could so my summaries and tables and charts made sense!!!
So, this is the process I follow for super dense subjects, and it works wonders for me, but it may not work for you! I learn a lot of stuff by writing it down in a much simpler way than it was given to me, and it makes revision for me much easier because I already worked with that. I hope this helps some of you, and if you liked this little guide, I’m open to suggestions on different ones that you may find helpful!!!
P.S: You can click on the images to see the little notes I made on them better!!
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