Color code your notes
The most frequent advice I get on notetaking is to have a consistent color system to help when reviewing the notes. So I got different colors of post-its, highlighters and pens and decided to start doing it this week and here are my recommendations.
- don't worry too much about buying new pens and highlighters before trying with the ones you already have
- too many colors might make your notes look cluttered. for neater notes, stick with few simple colors. start taking your notes with a neutral color like blue or black and use contrasting colors like red or light blue to make keywords pop when you read it later.
- before you start, write down the categories you want to include in your color system. some examples are important stuff, formulas, examples, definitions, things you need to research after school... it depends a lot on the subjects you're taking.
- if you have trouble defining the categories and colors, try to associate the color coding with another note-taking method. for example, when you use the cornell method, there's no need for a color to stand for keywords if you're going to write them down in the left column.
I came up with some category ideas for myself that can work for pre-med and 1st/2nd year med students:
Clinical correlations, examples and drug effects in red
Formulas in light blue
Books/articles recommendation and things that require further research in green
Unknown terms and definitions in orange/yellow
As for keywords and important things, I prefer to underline and uppercase them
I am posting some note-taking inspiration later today. If you want to see how my color system looks like, leave a message!