#academic notes

[creepingintheivy]

September 25, 2024

I think uni has calmed down enough I will actually remember to post journals. I am really enjoying this semester, there is just so much for me to do!

In terms of classes, I have:

Linguistics

History and Theory of Anthropology

Great European Film Directors

The Crusades

Astronomy

I have great professors all around, and I can really see how much I have improved across all my academic fields.

I am also a peer consultant at the writing center as well as a writing fellow for a Health class. So helping people with their writing on top of my own. Beyond that I am the Vice-President of the History Club on campus and one of the History Department’s Undergraduate Ambassadors, so lots of drain on my time. I have been managing it well though, and really enjoying everything.

I am still volunteering at the museum, and we are having a fly day for the volunteers to fly in the aircraft, very very exciting!

Off to take linguistics notes. Then a presentation for my Crusades class and a film review for my Film class.

[do-you-know-this-dw-story]

academic notes (short story: 2014)

do you know this doctor who story?

yes, i have read it

yes, i have read parts of it

i have heard of it & plan to read

i have only heard of it

no, i have never heard of it

Voting ended onMay 31, 2025

[patientlystudying]

📷 chemistry notes... again,, but I specifically like this page,, I think it’s the way I wrote “capillary rise” lol.

Day 10/31 “note-taking”

To be honest I feel like my notes aren’t really perfect, making them is also time-consuming which is why I decided before this semester began to just print out the slides and write my extra notes on them. I did do that with my biology course but I still haven’t printed anything for my chemistry course, so I’m just writing notes until I do so. And for my electives, writing notes is just useless, so I just print out the “books” and highlight whatever I find important 🤷‍♀️.

Ive been feeling very ~sad~ these past few days, so I haven’t been studying as much as I want to. But I have to study biology today, I also need to study for my biology lab. Wish me luck☘️

[breathing-in-gilded-dust]

I'm doing research on mystery cults of ancient Greece and I was wondering if posting my notes and thoughts would be something you would be interested in? Ideas, facts, modern implements, etc. Let me know! I'll be taking notes anyway so I thought I'd ask!

[anameandaplace]

Elemental Inquiries and Notes on Language

Very generally, WHAT IS COMMUNICATION? Commonly taken as a connection, imparting or exchange between living things using gestures, signs, or sounds.

WHAT IS A LANGUAGE? Often viewed as any systematic communication used by a community. By ‘systematic’ I mean an established form of procedure, according to a fixed plan, or even a synonym for methodical.

HOW DOES ANIMAL COMMUNICATION COMPARE TO HUMAN LANGUAGE? The former is general enough to capture the breadth of the interrelations in the animal kingdom whereas the latter represents the subset of examples that set humans apart as a species and enable us to produce a written self-reflective analysis like this one which is a uniquely human experience.

HOW DO VERBS WORK? It describes an action, state, or event, and forms the main part of the predicate of a sentence, that is where the subject connects to the verb. Example: “Bob runs” where “runs” is the verb. Ostensibly all human languages have verbs. Most also have nouns.

WHAT IS A NOUN? Typically defined as a reference to a thing, idea, or a proper name and generally takes the place of the subject or object connected to a verb. distinct from pronouns in that the latter are used to mention the former.

Nouns and verbs are said to be Parts of Speech (PoS) which are instruments of GRAMMAR for dividing a language into functional parts. The set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order, is referred to as SYNTAX.

I speak Twenty-First Century North-Western American English. It has been put this way for illustrative purposes because all humans ACQUIRE a language but only a fraction of people will learn the DIALECT of English specified.

When human language is thought of as having a set of historico-geographical families and systematically analyzed we’re using a theory of language to understand language roughly along the lines of a LINGUISTIC THEORY.

To clarify the last few points:

WHAT IS LANGUAGE SYNTAX? Broadly understood as the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language: where by “well-formed” one could also read “correctly conforming to the formation rules.” In this context formation rules are a reference to grammar which is another way of thinking about how sentences are meaningfully structured.

HOW DOES LINGUISTICS COMPARE TO OTHER LANGUAGE THEORIES? This takes explaining the difference between linguistics and theories associated with linguistics before making any sense of further comparisons. Language theories related to linguistics are all related in that they are studying language. From this perspective there are a large family of theories that intersect and participate in similar themes involving language. Getting specific, however, Linguistics is often more focused on the structure and application of language through sub-fields like morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Other scientific branches of language theory don’t always belong in the same group as linguistic theories but mainstream contemporary theory treats these as fringe exceptions. The philosophy of language also includes considering language theories that wouldn’t be described as scientific but are nevertheless interesting in some respect.

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LANGUAGE THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE? Yes, Language theories are a subject of interest to philosophy but philosophy itself is not a theory of language. The philosophy of language is interested in the concept of language prior to the scientific study of it and as such there is at least one respect where there’s a fundamental difference: the relevance of pre-scientific theories of language to philosophy. The accepted contemporary theories of language are all linguistic theories even though there are those theories interested in language explicitly outside of a structural or scientific context. Philosophy of language takes time with these cases as well as taking an interest in examining the nature and meaning of linguistics or language theories in general: so meta-context.

[creepingintheivy]

March 6, 2024

Essay outlining ft. messy scribble notes.

Did you know there are at least 15 separate sub-variants of Gothic architecture?? Now you do! I started this paper wondering if I’d be able to hit the page minimum (something that is notoriously hard for me to do, I am a very concise writer) and now I’m worried if I’ll be able to stay under the page maximum. I do adore Gothic architecture.

It’s always easier to write a paper on something you know nothing about, I’ve found. When you don’t know very much about a topic, surface level things are new and you don’t dig very deep.

When you know all the surface things and some of the deeper things, falling into a rabbit hole is so much easier. And that’s what I’ve done…

Hopefully the outline will be done by the time I get off work, then I’ll only have two homework assignments to do in the car tonight! One is simply annotating a document and the other is note taking so I am not too worried. This outline was taking up a lot of my bandwidth this week.

Then I really have to study for my geography test.

Hope everyone else is having a good week! I wish everyone good luck and good grades!

[creepingintheivy]

How do you take your notes?? Love your blog <3

Thank you!

I use a modified version of the Cornell note taking system! I’ll explain it below.

I use multiple things to take my notes:

Black fountain pen (Lamy Safari medium nib or Platinum Preppy fine nib)

Multicolored gel pens (Zebra Sarasa, 0.5)

Highlighters (Zebra Midliners 5ct)

Clear stickie notes of various sizes

Black permanent pen (for writing on plastic, 0.3)

Mechanical pencil and Eraser (Pentel Graphgear 500, 0.5; General’s Factis Eraser)

These all have a specific meaning to me within my notes so that I can easily see what I am looking for on a page at a glance.

I take my main notes in pencil so I can easily change them as I need to, I often mis-spell things so this is useful for that or if I got information wrong and need to change it

Gel Pens:

I use these to separate different sections of notes that are within the same larger note module. I also use them to add information in margins when they are big enough as they are easily distinguishable from the pencil.

Fountain Pen:

I use this to do my main heading and date for normal notes, and for notes that do not directly apply to the class but are still in that classes notebook. (My history notebook has history notes in pencil and the notes we took on writing in fountain pen. I know I’ll be using the writing notes a lot so I want to find them easily)

Highlighters:

The highlighters I use come in a five pack, and there are green, tan, grey, light pink, and brown colors. Each one has a highlighter tip and a bullet tip.

Green: highlight definitions or very important information. I only ever use this color in this way so that if I see green flipping through my notebook I know I need to go back at look at it no matter what

Tan: Context, sub definitions, or extra information. This is the color I go to after the green

Grey and Pink: I use these colors interchangeably as the page needs to highlight things I personally think I will want to go back and read

Brown: This color is too dark for normal highlighting so I use it to separate different note modules

Plastic Stickies and Pen:

These are for extra context when I have no room and for adding diagrams. I most often use them for when I have taken a full page of notes from the textbook before class and the professor adds extra information during lecture. I prefer the clear notes to the (more ‘aesthetic’) brown and tan ones because I can see through them and more easily remove them or lift them up to see the notes underneath. I do need a special pen to mark on them without smudging, but that is not an issue for me.

As the are clear, if I want to add a diagram, I can pull it up on my phone, add a stickie over it, and trace it with the pen. So no more messy diagrams.

Note taking:

I have two different times when I am taking notes and the things I do change order depending on that. If I am taking notes from something like a textbook, a documentary, or a slideshow on my laptop, I do all my highlighting and extras as I am taking the actual notes. When I am in lecture, I take my notes all in pencil except for the note sections in pen, then go back during breaks in the lecture and highlight/add where I need to.

I take very very extensive notes, so do not be alarmed if you don’t have a lot of notes. You want to have at least (In order of importance):

Definitions and Big Ideas

Important Context

Diagrams

After you have those, you can add things that you want to remember, things that are less important but maybe still good to know, and extra facts or figures.

My note taking follows this pattern:

Section Title (pen)

Definition word - definition (always highlighted in green)

Idea (level of importance determines green, tan, pink or grey, or no highlight)

Sub ideas

Bulleted under idea

Sometimes the sub ideas also have sub ideas that are bulleted under them

I don’t bother with the summary in the Cornell system as I don’t usually have time in a lecture to do them, if you have time and want to do it, go for it!

Handwriting

My handwriting can vary from a little shaky but very legible to scribbled based on how fast I am writing. If you don’t have great handwriting, don’t worry about it as long as you can read it later. It is not easy to notice this right after you have written it because you know what it says, but if you even think it might be a little too messy, erase it and write it again. You’ll thank yourself later.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the askbox!

[terriko]

Glow Pen! TWSBI Eco (Medium) (on Curiousity.ca)

I bought a glowing pen to replace my finicky first pen. Plus some musing on how the glowing definitely makes the pen work better for me; science agrees!

Read more...