As you step up from high school into college you might realise that taking notes becomes harder since there’s more material to cover, teachers go fast and they don’t really write everything on the board. I remember my notes would end up looking cluttered and I didn’t really understand my own notes at the end of the day. So here are 4 tips which can make note-taking easier and more effective:
1. Preview the material. By using your syllabus or the slides given by your professor make your notes prior to the class and that will help you be more active during your lecture and grasp concepts more easily. Plus it will give you time to make it pretty!
2. Digital or written? It’s best to do what accommodates you better, as long as you are able to understand the order of ideas, it helps you in your learning process and and very importantly in a way that you don’t lose or forget your notes. I decided to go for a mix of both. I make handwritten notes in my preview, go to class, fill up the details and my final notes are digital so everything is in order and in one single place.
3. What technique to use? Feynman, Cornell, diagrams? What’s right? It really depends on the topic. My tip is to go back to older notes which were really useful to you and that can give you an idea of what techniques you can use per subject.
4. Will I really have the time? There are plenty of ways to go around this. Split the content with friends, watch a video, use blogs or webpages instead of reading the textbook (after all you first need to grasp the main ideas in a preview), give yourself a time limit and prioritise your subjects.
But the most important thing is preventing a mental block. If you feel stressed out give yourself a break, 20 minute break is better than 2 hours sabotaging yourself because you can’t focus or start to get overwhelmed. So take care of yourself so you can make the most out of your study time.
Those are all the tips. Wish you good luck in your studies! <3
