This is why I held onto taking notes for so long, and why I was wary at first about stopping. I know that there’s legitimate statistics and studies that show that in general people benefit from writing notes down even if they never look at them. I think I just happen to be one of the few that falls out of the “in general” part in this case.
It depended on the class. A math class? I copied every problem we did in class along with comments about what exactly we did sometimes. A literature class? I might take a few notes about symbols or whatever. Generally, if it was in the text, I didn’t bother taking notes on it because it already exists and I do a fantastic job of remembering stuff I read. Notes were basically a way for me to turn intangible audio into text which I could then remember.
I literally can’t process anything of substance that is spoken without writing it down. I have a problem where one person I work with will insist that I not write notes. They have the notion you are not listening if you’re writing. I really have exceptionally bad auditory processing (FYI my hearing is normal) and whatever I dont write down is gone in 10 minutes. This leads to all manner of frustration between us. I have tried to explain but she doesn’t grok learning style. She’s vey intelligent but was educated in an old fashioned style by mean nuns and thinks that’s the best and only way to learn.
Btw I am NOT a transcriber of lectures, as I am writing I am listening, choosing what’s important, and connecting it with other material, none of which I can do based only on listening to the information.
TLDR I don’t tell other people what they should do to learn, and I think it’s weird when others do.
I think I’m somewhat opposite. I can read a textbook or write notes and not process a word of it, but the second it’s read to me it clicks. I can also get around the textbook limitation by “acting out” what’s in it, meaning if it’s describing an algorithm – writing out the code, if it’s a math property, doing an example etc.
That might be a bit of an exaggeration, I’m not illiterate and my reading comprehension is fine, I just find that just by reading or taking notes I don’t make all the connections or observations that I do otherwise, nor do I retain the information as long as I do when I do a project based on the information or hear it. (Discussion is even better than hearing)
I also learn well by doing. And I don’t need to take notes on what I read ( I think I may have briefed a case once in law school) so it does seem we are almost opposite in that way
I am visual-kinesthetic with weak auditory processing, you are auditory-kinesthetic with weak visual processing. 
It’s all good I just wish people would understand (in general, not you) that no one style is universal or a cure all!
My law school study group had many different styles, that’s one thing that made it such an awesome and effective group.
I generally took notes, but they were seldom detailed. They were more like memory cues–one or two cryptic lines to trigger my memory of half an hour of discussion. They were completely useless to anyone else unless I sat with them and recreated the lecture.
One peculiar advantage it occasionally had: sometimes my notes were correct when the actual lecture had gotten something wrong. When I reconstructed the discussion from them while doing homework, I subconsciously edited out things that didn’t make sense, and deduced the correct material to fill in the gap. Meanwhile, my classmates struggled with their faithfully copied wrong information. (Obviously, the reverse situation was also possible, but I don’t recall ever getting tripped up that way.)
I agree with the OP. I found I could listen, follow and absorb the material in a lecture much better by not taking notes, or taking only very minimal ones. I would usually keep a pen in my hand and a notebook in front of me, but very little would get written down. Back when I did bother with notes, the mental effort required for actually writing something down and thinking up an appropriate paraphrase of what had been said (I couldn’t possibly write quickly enough to get it verbatim) was a considerable distraction, and often was enough to make me fail to properly take in the next thing being said (while I was writing down the last thing). Sometimes I would lose the thread altogether whilst trying to note down some particular point. Also, when I did take notes, I usually found them almost completely useless for revision and the like afterwards. Generally, textbooks were much more appropriate for that sort of thing (although there can sometimes be quite a big disparity between what the teacher wants you to know and what the textbook writer wants to tell you).
No doubt, though, many students’ experience is quite different. It will depend upon the student’s individual psychology, the teacher’s style, and sometimes the subject matter.
I’d always have paper ready, but didn’t take notes unless something useful that I don’t already know is being said. To me full note taking is a sure sign of not knowing anything about the material.
I never took notes. I try to just listen and make sure I’m following along. I don’t take notes in meetings, either.
Most of my teachers (in high school, college, grad school) did not regularly provide prepared lecture notes. They weren’t lazy; it just wasn’t the way things were done. Plus it would have involved a non-trivial cost for all that printing/copying. (And this was of course before there was any such thing as PowerPoint or making things available online.) In the case of courses that didn’t have, or didn’t stick to, a textbook, taking notes was pretty much a necessity.
For some students, taking notes actually helps the student pay attention and process the lecture. (See Hello Again’s first post.) In fact, taking notes on what you read is a sometimes-recommended study technique when reading a book.
I’ve never been much of a note taker. I have had tachers, professors and bosses question my lack of note taking. It just doesn’t work for me. I end up with a page full of words, but only a few end up being germane. I’d rather listen during he meeting/class, perhaps jot down some broad thoughts, then boil it down to “stuff I need to do/remember” when I get back to my desk and have a chance to process the information.
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.
I agree it depends on the class. I don’t know how I would have survived my math or physics classes without my notes. It showed step by step how to solve some key problems. No way could I have absorbed that just from seeing it one time in the classroom.
I never took notes and I never prepared for exams, either (but still mostly aced them). As far as I’m concerned, studying for an exam is a “cheat” and a sign that you didn’t learn the material when you were supposed to (i.e., the weeks leading up to the exam). Of course, this works better for more conceptual courses (like engineering or math) and less ones that depend on a lot of memorization. For quite a lot of stuff I made sure to read up before the professor got to that point. So the lecture worked as a backup for the real learning, instead of the converse.
As I said, it was specifically math-type classes where I took a lot of notes. The professor would fill the chalkboards with equations, showing a procedure for solving, say, a differential equation. Surely I wasn’t expected to be able to reproduce the procedure just from seeing it the one time. I’d have to refer to my notes a few times until it became ingrained.
In grad school, it varies for me by course. For the more social science-y courses, I find that the professor’s notes will suffice; they’re generally pretty thorough, and I should be getting most of the concepts from the readings, anyway. For the more analysis-driven courses (statistical analysis, not literary-type), I’ll take some notes, because if there’s a formula I need, I want to make sure that I have it somewhere easily accessible. Otherwise, not so much.
The biggest exception, however, are courses that are entirely lecture without slideshows (which are rarer and rarer nowadays). For those, I take constant notes, often stream of consciousness, as the lecture goes on. The point of them isn’t so much to absorb the material as it is to ensure that I’m paying attention during the lecture.
That being said, I’ve had professors say that notes in their classes are unnecessary, and that the readings and printouts should cover what we need to know. That’s mostly because I think that they want us actively engaged in the discussion rather than scribbling in a notebook.
And yet here you are posting when taxes are due in only 2 and a half mo. D’oh! You already did them - forget I said anything. 
Personally, I was only ever properly motivated by the abject terror of a looming deadline. It’s just how I roll (skid?).
Ex-college prof (and therefore ex-student).
Didn’t take notes, didn’t see the point. Know a lot of very successful students who felt similarly.
It seems to be something that 4th grade teachers think are great but as usual aren’t.
There’s been a couple studies over the years that confirm this. One group had someone even go on the Today show to be interviewed by Katie Couric (so it was a while ago). Poor Katie didn’t prep well. She thought she was doing an interview with someone who had shown that taking notes was a good idea. She was seriously thrown when she finally realized what the researcher was saying.
I saw it in my classes. Students taking notes aren’t paying the least bit of attention to the lecture. They have no understanding of the material, therefore the notes are useless. They also don’t ask questions because they aren’t following along. Etc.
When I was in HS, I took physics from a guy who told us that in college if the teacher walked and said “Good morning” you replied “Good morning” but in grad school you wrote it down in your notebook. He also collected and graded the notes we took in class. And you had to organize with I, II,… and within that, A, B, … and within that 1,2,… and within that a, b,… And god help you if you had an a and no b.
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?
In one course, the professor decided to try a system in which each student took notes for one week and wrote them up carefully and distributed them to everyone. He expected that all the rest of the students would listen carefully and not take notes. The notetaker for the week would also benefit by have to write them up carefully. It sounded great to me but I soon realized that practically everyone else in the class was taking notes as usual. It was as though they were so unused to just listening that they could just do that.
Even the sketchy notes I did have were not studied before the exams. I would mentally review the material.
As usual, YMMV.
I took copious notes in all my classes…both liberal arts and engineering.
I got good grades too. ( a couple decades ago…)
And I just attended a day-long professional seminar. I took copious notes. (And my colleague who didn’t is now asking me to explain the details.)
For me, notetaking is not just good, it is vital.