Messy Vs. Neat Notes
Okay, we’ve all been in class taking notes and felt a time crunch. Maybe your teacher talks to fast, maybe they just switch to the next slide a bit too quick, or maybe you just have way-too-short classes. In any case, sometimes you need to take notes as fast as you can, meaning they can get pretty messy pretty fast.
In this case, my number one piece of advice is to ignore the creative side of your brain that’s screaming at you to highlight things and use colored pens for different titles and points. Just write the info down as best and concisely as you can, no matter how terrible and messy it is. Oftentimes after my chemistry classes my notes aren’t even entirely legible to anyone’s eyes but mine, but that’s okay.
Sometimes you’ll hear people say that you should always rewrite messy notes neater after class, but I thank that that’s a bit bullshit. If you learn better by looking at pretty, colorful, well-organized notes, then you should absolutely do that!! But let’s be honest, if you’re reading this then it either doesn’t make a difference to you or you couldn’t care less. Say what you will about me, but even I’ll admit that I’m one lazy morherfucker. Work smart not hard, as my grandmother used to say.
Instead, I recommend reading through your notes after class and then highlighting/erasing and rewriting the more important points, and then gathering all the questions that you have after reviewing everything you wrote. Sometimes in my rush to write everything down, I don’t realize that something my professors said doesn’t make any sense to me, so this is a good time to figure out any questions, misunderstandings, or problems you have with what was taught. This is EXTREMELY HELPFUL and has prevented me from studying incorrect/nonsense notes a billion times. It’s always better to be a pain in your teachers’ asses because you ask so many questions but have good grades than being a people pleaser while flunking classes.
As a final last-ditch effort of being as lazy as possible while still doing well, I recommend taking your notes in class with a pencil (so you can erase mistakes or SUPER messy notes to rewrite later) and rewriting the few important pieces of information from your notes in blue pen. It’s been proven in scientific studies that notes taken in blue pen are more easy for people to remember, whatever that’s worth.
Work hard while also doing the least amount of work you can!
-James