Note Taking

For some reason I have always been a terrible note taker. Maybe it's my illegible handwriting or my short attention span; but I have never been able to get the hang of taking organized, and thorough notes. I feel that my main problem is being able to pay attention and take notes simultaneously. For me, it's either one or the other. Usually I opt to just take the notes and reread them later, however this causes serious problems. This is because if I do not listen to what the professor is saying I can miss something extremely important.

This problem has plagued me for years, however I have found a couple of solutions recently. Solving my illegible handwriting problem was pretty easy; I just started taking my computer to class. This allows me to finish the note taking and then listen to the professor explain some extraneous yet relevant information. The other technique I used was plug-in notes. For this technique I would take my notes from each class day and then sort it out by relevance to the exam. For example, If my teacher would say something like, "definitely know this" or "this is important" I would definitely include it in my final product of the plug-in notes. My final product is a chart that has possible questions that might be asked and the answers to those questions.

Because I am a visual learner this chart helps me organize the information in my head. The action I took was to organize my notes to be more concise. Then I organized this chart. The material for this specific chart was for my psychology class. This is probably one of my most difficult courses and I'll take any help I can get. This chart is perfect because you can make them based on subject matter or really whatever way you like to learn. For me, I like to group similar things together because it really does help me learn.

Overall, I still consider my note taking skills to be sub-par but they are getting better slowly but surely. The plug-in notes did help me progress not only as a note taker but as a student.