# Students who don't take notes **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 30, 2013, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804 "2013-01-30T13:04:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/41 "2013-01-31T16:04:33Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Well, my experience was totally different. The further I got along, the fewer notes I took. Especially in math courses, when taking notes would interfere with my ability to absorb the lecture. I still have my notebooks from grad school and they are pretty sketchy. However, most of my fellow students spent the entire lectures trying to get down as much as possible. How could they do that and listen at the same time? I may be reading too much into this, but this looks to me like something an “auditory learner” would say—i.e. someone who understands and retains things better if he takes them in through his ears than through his eyes. For such a person, taking notes (and looking them over later) might well be less useful than it would be to a “visual learner.” ---
**Author:** ![perfectparanoia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@perfectparanoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/perfectparanoia)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/42 "2013-01-31T16:49:38Z")
For a liberal arts course (psychology, sociology, etc.), I never took notes. I learned the concepts well by listening and absorbing. For math classes, I rarely went to class if the course notes/textbook were good. When they weren’t I took notes like a crazy person. Since there would be an exam and it was going to be the only reference material I had, they had better be complete. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/43 "2013-01-31T19:49:34Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Even the sketchy notes I did have were not studied before the exams. I would mentally review the material. See, this is what I don’t understand. If you didn’t study your notes, what were you actually reviewing when you “mentally reviewed” the material? Were you staring off into space trying to remember what the professor had said during class? Were you looking at anything at all? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/44 "2013-01-31T20:08:22Z")
> [@perfectparanoia](#): > > For a liberal arts course (psychology, sociology, etc.), I never took notes. I learned the concepts well by listening and absorbing. > > For math classes, I rarely went to class if the course notes/textbook were good. When they weren’t I took notes like a crazy person. Since there would be an exam and it was going to be the only reference material I had, they had better be complete. I’m still trying to decide whether to object to your implication that mathematics does not belong amongst the [liberal arts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts#History), or whether that would just be a petty hijack. Your point that different sorts of subjects/classes call for different approaches to note-taking is well-taken though. Still, I can’t imagine any academic class where I wouldn’t want to have pen and paper handy in case the professor/instructor said something that was worth writing down (whether because it was important or because it was funny). ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/45 "2013-01-31T20:22:35Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > See, this is what I don’t understand. If you didn’t study your notes, what were you actually reviewing when you “mentally reviewed” the material? Were you staring off into space trying to remember what the professor had said during class? Were you looking at anything at all? Can’t speak for him, but for me literally reviewing the facts was nigh useless for my upper division classes. There was absolutely no benefit in going over class examples or definitions. That’s not to say they weren’t useful when given, but they were to get you to basic competency with the material. By the time you’re studying for the test you should already have basic competency from class time. Test questions were frequently about difficult questions that were not merely facsimiles of things done in class. They were frequently difficult conceptual questions or processes that required an intimate understanding of why the examples worked the way they did and the underlying properties of the concept at hand. In this way, the specific examples used in class were irrelevant (though useful at the time they were given), they could be substituted by any sufficiently complex example you could make up off the top of your head. There’s no point pounding an example already dissected in class to the ground, torture testing a NEW example you made up yourself was much more productive. ETA: Perhaps a more concrete example is in order. In class you may go over sorting algorithms. The algorithms themselves are simple and easy to look up the definitions of if needed – but you’ll probably memorize them the first time you hear them. The examples might involve running different sorts on different datasets. But the test questions would be things like “on a set of data with these properties, which is the best sorting algorithm to use, and why?” ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/46 "2013-02-01T01:22:31Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I think note taking is just to keep you paying attention, not that it actually helps in and of itself. It’s hard to get distracted when you have to listen to what is said and parse it down to the important parts so you can write it down. If you can do this without taking notes, then, of course, the actual writing or typing is going to reduce the effectiveness. We humans are not good multitaskers. Yes. I always took notes - but I hardly ever looked at them afterwards; just the act of writing something down made me remember it well enough. But whenever I tried to get by without taking the notes, I didn’t remember so well. But people are different. A close friend of mine took copious notes, and rewrote them afterwards. She got a Ph.D. in mathematics; another friend of mine opened his notebook at the beginning of every class, put the date at the top of the page, and noted the things he thought were really important - which meant for many classes, nothing at all (funny story - another friend of ours took a class with friend #2, and one day when he had missed class, said to friend #2 (somewhat sarcastically, knowing of #2’s note-taking style) “I missed class today - can you tell me the date?”) ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/47 "2013-02-01T02:56:57Z")
I hardly ever took notes in high school. It distracted me from actually listening, plus most of the stuff I had fairly good knowledge about already. In college, I started having to take notes. Not only were the subjects completely novel to me (scriptwriting, for example), but the information was dense, yet presented at a pace that allowed for notes. It took a few movies in film history class for me to start taking notes during the viewings, but I got pretty darn good at it the next semester for science fiction film history. I still do it on occasion. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/48 "2013-02-01T03:04:14Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > I question note-taking, as colleges move more and more to the “discussion” model and away from the “lecture” model. I just reviewed my notebooks from college, and a bigger mess of drawings, idle thoughts, signature practicing, lists of baseball players, you never saw. Two thoughts - 1. Instructors seem to be using electronic slide presentations (e.g. PowerPoint) more and more to lecture from, and a quick “Could I get a copy of the slides?” is enough to get you a pretty complete set of lecture notes. Some instructors upload them to a class website as a matter of course. If you can get the slides, taking notes on anything mentioned in the slides is pretty much a waste of time and you can concentrate on writing down things that weren’t in the slides. If the instructor won’t give you a copy of the slides, they are a dick. 2. My own experience has been that I tended to take lecture notes that I never (or hardly ever) used to study from. I generally studied straight from the textbook or with homework. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/49 "2013-02-01T11:21:50Z")
Keep in mind that classes and colleges vary widely in difficulty. And some topics are more amenable to it than others. I never took notes in high school. There were times when it came in handy in college and grad school. I’m a fan of it for most chemistry classes. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/50 "2013-02-01T19:02:46Z")
Maybe you were just really good at [Chunking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_%28psychology%29) ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/51 "2013-02-01T19:50:41Z")
When I was a high school physics teacher I provided notes, and didn’t require students to take them but I HIGHLY encouraged it. I agree that not everyone needs to take notes to learn so I don’t think making it a requirement like other high school teachers do is the best approach to teaching. But on the other hand, some unmotivated students who could learn if they took notes but are lazy and won’t do it unless it’s required might benefit from making it a requirement. In college I took notes as best as I could but I wouldn’t say it helped me all that much. I learned much more doing homework in study groups with my friends than going back through my notes and re-reading them (which I did a lot of too). ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/52 "2013-02-01T19:59:05Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Can’t speak for him, but for me literally reviewing the facts was nigh useless for my upper division classes. There was absolutely no benefit in going over class examples or definitions. That’s not to say they weren’t useful when given, but they were to get you to basic competency with the material. By the time you’re studying for the test you should already have basic competency from class time. > > Test questions were frequently about difficult questions that were not merely facsimiles of things done in class. They were frequently difficult conceptual questions or processes that required an intimate understanding of why the examples worked the way they did and the underlying properties of the concept at hand. In this way, the specific examples used in class were irrelevant (though useful at the time they were given), they could be substituted by any sufficiently complex example you could make up off the top of your head. There’s no point pounding an example already dissected in class to the ground, torture testing a NEW example you made up yourself was much more productive. > > ETA: Perhaps a more concrete example is in order. > > In class you may go over sorting algorithms. The algorithms themselves are simple and easy to look up the definitions of if needed – but you’ll probably memorize them the first time you hear them. The examples might involve running different sorts on different datasets. But the test questions would be things like “on a set of data with these properties, which is the best sorting algorithm to use, and why?” I’m not asking as someone ignorant of upper division courses. I have a Ph.D. in physics. So I’ve taken plenty of high level math and science courses. I still took notes in those classes. Certainly, the tests always asked new twists on things we had learned in class. But in order to make sure that I HAD learned the material in class, I would go over my notes. The point is that, at least for me, class time was not sufficient to give me basic competency. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2013, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804/53 "2013-02-01T23:46:34Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > I’m not asking as someone ignorant of upper division courses. I have a Ph.D. in physics. So I’ve taken plenty of high level math and science courses. I still took notes in those classes. Certainly, the tests always asked new twists on things we had learned in class. But in order to make sure that I HAD learned the material in class, I would go over my notes. The point is that, at least for me, class time was not sufficient to give me basic competency. Certainly I didn’t mean to imply that **clearly** you weren’t familiar with upper division courses if you took notes in them. I was just replying from my perspective. At least, **for me** , in Computer Science courses, the in-class material **was** sufficient to gain basic competency. > [@YogSosoth](#): > > Maybe you were just really good at [Chunking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_%28psychology%29) Holy shit, that’s a real thing? I do that and I even **called** it chunking. Now I’m finding out it’s a forrealz psychology thing that means (more or less) what I made it up to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/students-who-dont-take-notes/648804.md?page=2)