How I take notes during lectures
First off: my lecture notes aren’t pretty, and they’re not supposed to be! Their One True Purpose is helping me retain the most information I can, in a way that is possible to follow in revision. So, how do I do it?
First, let’s talk about supplies:
Everything I use is in this picture. One notebook (ruled, dotted, blank, whatever works best for you, but it helps if the pages are the kind you can tear out easily), one pen (neutral colour, good to read and smooth to write with! Also this BIC costs almost nothing, another win for the gays!), one textmarker to highlight the name of the class (I like to use blue, because it draws attention but it isn’t a signal colour that screams IMPORTANT! like red or yellow) and one highlighter to highlight extremely important key words or dates (make sure this one IS a screaming neon signal colour). Since I have a few professors who always like to do a short revision of last week’s lecture, I also have a green marker, so that I can supplement any important bits I might have missed last time, while signifying that they came up in revision and are thus key topics or concepts!
This is what my lecture notes usually look like:
Every batch of notes has the name of the lecture on the very top line, highlighted in blue. I try to use blue as little as possible in the body of the notes, so that when I go through my notes later, I can instantly see where a new lecture starts. I also start a new page for every new lecture, so that if I wanted, I could tear the pages out and give them to someone without also giving them half of the last and the following lecture! Then I have the date on the right side and the number of the lecture circled in the left margin. This is extremely important so you can instantly see if you missed a lecture by just checking the numbers, and it’ll help you synch your revision with your textbook, because lots of professors lecture parallel to one.
Now to the actual notes: If you’re lucky and your professor is one of the Blessed Ones that tells you the topics they’ll be convering today first thing, write those down. I use arrows to signify related topics, dots or dashes for lists, triangles with exclamation marks or just excalmation marks for important topics or key words, question marks for things I’m not sure about, little eyes for book recommendations or things I want to look up, and capitalization for headlines. DO NOT highlight your headlines, this just costs you valuable time and oftentimes in revision I’ve noticed that I should’ve put a headline somewhere else! Use your highlighter for important key words, and save the headline highlighting for revision! By only highlighting key words, you’ll have a much better idea of what topics really are important, and if you want to rewrite your notes and make them pretty later, this’ll help a lot with organising! If your professor goes back and adds topics or does a mini revision and you missed something, write it down with a different colour to signify that it’s important! I use my green marker, but any colour will do as long as its a different one than you use normally.
It really helps a lot if you have your own list of quick symbols for “what the fuck”, “oh I wanna reasearch that”, “well THIS is important” and “this belongs together”, because this way, you’ll not only copy down information, you’ll also copy down your thought process during the lecture, which will help A LOT in revision or if you want to ask a question.
Also? Always highlight important dates, like exams or presentations.
I know you’re probably writing them down in your planner or putting them in your phone calendar, but trust me when I say doppelt hält besser.
