This is exactly how I work. Taking notes helps me remember - once it’s on the page, even if I don’t remember the note word for word, I remember that I wrote it down and can picture where it is, so at least if my recall isn’t perfect, I have access to the information. If I don’t take notes, I have to go back, sometimes ask someone to refresh my memory. And if it’s about something simple that I should know but for some reason have trouble remembering, it makes me look stupid (of course, if I can’t find my notes, I’ll ask regardless - I look even stupider if I don’t seek the information I can’t find).
Anyway, I don’t write things down word, for word, but if something is important enough for me to remember, that gets written down.
This seems obvious, but it should be mentioned. Everyone learns in different ways. What one person would find hopelessly distracting is the only way another person can focus. A good teacher can engage in a number of different learning styles. But not every teacher is good, and sometimes your own learning style is not a great match for the class. Anyway, by university we’ve all been in school for more than 12 years, and so whatever we have figured out for ourselves probably works.
I take copious notes, simply because it keeps my mind focused on the subject. I am terrible at listening to lectures, and my mind will wander like crazy if i don’t have some way to keep it tied to the task at hand. Note keep me from zoning out by engaging more parts of my brain in the material.
I never really use my notes after, unless I know there is something specific in them.
Also, I suspect that a lot of people who might seem to be taking notes on their laptops are really surfing the web, texting, playing games, or doing work for some other class or job. Overall, I don’t see a problem with any of that, so long as they are willing to accept the consequences of failing to pay attention or participate in class.
When I was in college that was juuuust starting and the problem I had was when someone would be watching funny videos and it would wind up distracting ME and I’d end up missing the entire class. Not that it’s their fault that I was distracted (I couldn’t hear it), but it was still annoying.
In college I used to worry about wasting people’s time in class. The class was all about the test. When I take professional training these days I say screw the other students, its a dog-eat-dog world and I’m getting my money’s worth by asking whatever question I want. Most of the students are there because somebody made them come anyway. They can’t be bothered to give more than a token effort (actually that sounds like some college classes too) yet I still see people furiously taking notes for some reason. Are they really planning to study their notes when they get home? A great wailling and gnashing of teeth goes up if a teacher suggests there might be any kind of testing.
Listening and writing don’t really seem to take up the same part of my brain, so doing both at once is rather easy for me. I can also write very quickly (and still legibly) so I’m generally able to not only keep track of and write down what’s on the board (lots of math in engineering) but also what the prof has just said about it, which I write down too. Friends like to borrow my notes since they are essentially a handwritten transcript of the course. I just write what I hear.
When I study, I use my notes and re-write condensed or more organized versions, sticking to the general point with a few key words or instructions/reminders rather than every example. A typical one-semester course gets condensed to 10-12 pages at most for final exams, for example. Then I do practice problems based only on my condensed notes. I guess it’s like distilling what I’ve learned - I reduce it to the essence, verify that I can apply it, and that’s good enough for me.
If I didn’t take notes in class I wouldn’t pay any attention at all. I’m prone to daydreaming or simply singing songs to myself in my head and missing what people say unless I’m writing it down! I’m a visual learner, so seeing the words on paper makes more sense to me than simply hearing them. I also make very little effort to comprehend the lecture; that comes later. I go in, record, and actually learn the material later. If I’m asked a direct question, I’ll take a second to review what I just wrote down and hope I can figure out the answer!
I was never a good note taker, since I would get all wrapped up in writing things down in an organized, legible format that I would forget to pay attention to the lecture. I always felt like there was something wrong with my learning skills, since I was never good at taking notes. It wasn’t until college that I realized that I don’t learn that way.
I had several college profs who did this, too. They would hand out their PowerPoint slides before the lecture and tell us to not take notes, but to just jot down a word or two if we think it will help us remember something later. This worked a lot better for me, since I could really listen to the lecture and still have some notes later.
Well, I’m not saying it was a good motivation. My current opinion is that a good teacher can say that they’ll discuss it with you after class just as easily as I can wait until after class. And I don’t care nearly so much about appearing stupid. Haven’t my posts here proven that?
Exactly - but you gotta bring that notebook so they don’t see your contempt for you. Plus it gives you something to do with your hands and if you have any thoughts about your REAL work you can write them down in the margins so you don’t forget. (Or if you have to, like, check that eBay auction or something.)
The prof’s lecture notes would be handy, but I’d use them as a backup. I would still want to take notes myself. Writing things myself helps me remember them. Someone else’s writing something down helps only if I get to look at it when I need the information.
I think there’s only a bare handful of classes where I took notes. The rest I just read and paid attention.
I still remember one poorly-taught American History class way back in high school where the entirety of the instruction was the class copying down the notes the teacher wrote on the board. I never wrote a damn thing in that class; instead I had the textbook open and simply read from that. I’d read the chapter about five times over before each test was given (and that was still more interesting than writing down notes), and I know I scored the highest in the class.
I have something of that at work, too. I go to meetings without a notepad and everyone else has one. I feel a flash of embarrassment, then get over it and instead focus on the conversation. I tend to be a bit absentminded, but so far as I’m aware I’m just as on the ball as everyone else.
I relied on my micro cassette recorder. I taped most of my lectures. After class I used the tape to type up my notes. If the material was also in the textbook, then I marked what the teacher covered.
Anything written on the blackboard, I jotted down on paper.
I love lecture classes, if the prof is the least bit entertaining the information will be burned into my brain like a good story.
I’m taking flight lessons now and much of it is independent study. I’m a good, fast reader but I get more from an hour of ground school than an entire day of studying at home.
I was a doodler in HS and college. During a test I sometimes remember the act of drawing something along with the correct answer. I’m not sure how sketching a covered wagon pulled by raptors helped me recall things about the reign of Peter the Great but it worked so I won’t quibble.
I’m kind of wishy-washy about notes. I take them in some classes, with varying degrees of completeness. I don’t take them in other classes. It all depends on the class.
Sometimes I take notes just to keep my mind from wandering or to keep me from falling asleep. In my lib arts classes, I don’t usually with notes but if I do, they rarely get used after I write them and I definitely don’t keep them for posterity. Classes like maths, sciences, and the ones with dates (history) generally have good notes that get used a lot and kept for future classes.
At the end of the semester, most of my notes go in the fireplace. I got a very large amount of pleasure from burning Plato and Chomsky last semester. I’ll keep certain notes if I think they’ll be relevant to other classes but most of the Lib Arts notes get burned. I am so looking forward to burning my psych notes.
I would prefer typing my notes but so far all my professors have said that computers aren’t allowed in class. I’m assuming this is a community college thing. I hope they stop banning them because I type a hell of a lot faster than I write.
Here are my experiences. My HS physics teacher not only insisted on our taking notes, he collected and marked them (and returned them). He also had a classification system. You started, say, with roman caps, then roman lc, then cap letters, then lc letters, finally numbers. And god help you if you had an i and no ii, at least. He also claimed that in HS, when the teacher said “Good morning”, you ignored him. In college you responded with “Good morning”, while in grad school, you wrote it down. Needless to say he was full of it.
When I got to college, I took a few notes, but rarely studied them. In grad school, I took fewer. One prof came up with the idea of a designated note-taker, one a week, who would take careful notes that week and carefully write them up (on spirit masters, this being pre-Xerox) and make copies for everyone. The idea was that everyone else could just listen. I thought it was great, but I noticed that all the other students took notes anyway.
I guess it just shows that everyone is different. I learned in class by listening; it seemed that everyone else just took notes and then went home and studied (which I did very little of).
Typing notes is allowed in my classes (though it’s pretty useless for most of them involving a ton of equations and diagrams). In the classes where people do it though - typically the Arts complementary courses - it fucking drives me crazy. I can’t stand the sound of 80 people clacking away on a keyboard (and those new MacBooks that are so popular here have a loud keyboard!) I much prefer classes where the professor bans them!
I can definitely understand why that would be annoying. My netbook has a very quiet keyboard so I doubt I’d be annoying to anyone but I have definitely been annoyed by other people’s laptops while studying in the library. Since our classrooms are so damn small, it’d be really loud if we were all typing. It makes sense that they don’t allow it.
