Taking notes.

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All of you have been in school some time or another, I presume. What were your notes like? Were you thorough? Did you take any at all? I merely ask because I am perusing my polisci notes to get ideas for an essay, and am confronted with notes like this:

"mill: 'to that, i say nigga please'"
"ok, i don't understand why (ex-boyfriend here) took like 5 showers a day, and (ex-boyfriend here) would not take showers and sleep in his clothes for like a week straight, that's all bizarre"
"(insert a drawing of Princess Toadstool here)"
"natural law = peace. natural law = war."
"(big giant drawing of a pony)"

I mean, I am thinking at this point in time that John Stewart Mill never said "Nigga please". Also, I am thinking that between Toadstool and ponies, this class is making me very twee.

― Ally (mlescaut), Friday, 11 April 2003 22:33 (twenty-two years ago)

New "It was Marx who coined the term 'peace out homeslice'" Answers Here.

― Ally (mlescaut), Friday, 11 April 2003 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

These are the most brilliant notes ever.

I ended up taking reasonably detailed notes laden with various little doodles and band name scrawlings for some reason. Then I proceeded to mostly ignore the notes for the tests.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 12 April 2003 00:14 (twenty-two years ago)

My calc notes are a struggle to see how little space I can take up so I can do the homework on the same page and Save The Trees. This is also because I never have more than 2 sheets of paper. Otherwise I have no notes, because it's better to fall asleep.

― Maria (Maria), Saturday, 12 April 2003 00:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I could never take notes very well in university and still can't. Mostly I'd just draw pictures of hamburgers.

― slutsky (slutsky), Saturday, 12 April 2003 00:35 (twenty-two years ago)

i was never very good at note-taking either, except as a pulse on what the professor was going to test us on. i just read the books/handouts and learned that way.

what minimal note-taking skills i had went totally to shit at l-school -- once i figured out that the Socratic method that law professors consider to be "teaching" is absolute horseshit, and that most law school classes ended up being some blowhard or other pontificating and/or some dimwit asking totally moronic questions, then i just stopped taking notes for the most part (and stopped going to class when i could get away with it) and just studied the books and/or outlines.

― Tad (llamasfur), Saturday, 12 April 2003 00:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha, guess what, this still happens to me at work.

A notepad at random: "Mutually exclusive? ESPN 76 F.Sup. . . "

ESPN?

― felicity (felicity), Saturday, 12 April 2003 00:51 (twenty-two years ago)

numbers and equations a word is very rare in my notebooks.
I haven't taken notes for non-mathbased classes yet. I the classes where I don't have to be writing constantly I usually draw in a seperate small notebook. On thing about my notes is I try to fit as much as I can on one page. (i guess it's the obsessive compulsive conservationist in me that does that)

― A Nairn (moretap), Saturday, 12 April 2003 01:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh my god, you should see my work notes too, felicity. I was looking for a phone number yesterday and found a scrawling of fortune cookie message instead. I mean, why didn't I just keep the fortune?

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 12 April 2003 01:23 (twenty-two years ago)

OK THAT'S IT. As I just said to Yanc3y: I'd rather MAKE my own Leviathan at this point. I'm never going to make 10 pages and it's all my fault because my notes are incomprehensible and I have to actually reread half of this thing to remember where the "good" parts are. Oh, I read this years ago, fuck this class...yeah, well, that'll teach me.

I mean, it won't, but I'll feel really contrite and sorry for myself for right now.

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 12 April 2003 01:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I mean, I am thinking at this point in time that John Stewart Mill never said "Nigga please".

no, but Nietzsche or Schopenhauer might have.

(this is one of the funnier things i've read here lately, btw)

― Tad (llamasfur), Saturday, 12 April 2003 02:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Depends on the class, of course, but generally speaking I am definitely of the 'put the notebook down and use the force, Luke' school. Or, at least, I think it's underrated or overfeared. In other words, devote your energy to paying attention to/readily digesting what the person is saying, at that moment.

When I was taking classes (and also from the other point of view, when I was teaching sections), it always kind of irritated me to watch the people whose only focus is on scrambling to furiously write down every last word the lecturer is saying, whether important or clearly unimportant (probably in the vain hope that they will re-read it at some point later with the same manic energy with which they copied it down).

― Joe (Joe), Saturday, 12 April 2003 02:25 (twenty-two years ago)

I would just fall asleep.

― RJG (RJG), Saturday, 12 April 2003 02:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I mean, I am thinking at this point in time that John Stewart Mill never said "Nigga please".
no, but Nietzsche or Schopenhauer might have.

Ally to lecturer, end of semester: "An F! But all the work I put into my essays! How can you justify it? It's of no consequence--in the words of Bertrand Russell, fuck you, fucko."

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 12 April 2003 02:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I would also like to point out for Ned and Tad's amusement that I circled a part in the Rousseau readings and wrote "vs. Dostoyevsky???" I think the three question marks are appropriate, what the fuck? I think I'm going to scan in these notes at work on Monday and post them online, cos they're really classic. I've turned into my mother, who still maintains to this day that her International Journalism class was about German soft-core porn and how it related to the Dali Lama.

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 12 April 2003 02:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I lost my shit reading this thread at work. My notes from Bar review are filled with fledgling original rap lyrics (well, rhymes at least).

Note - Anyone who enjoys the class Ally is currently taking would be well-advised to take a class with R*bert Amd*r

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 12 April 2003 04:05 (twenty-two years ago)

That recommendation will be taken into consideration by me anyone who can figure out what class I'm taking based on the things I'm describing within this thread.

I've just made it to 5 pages! Ally to Hobbes: BOOYAH.

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 12 April 2003 04:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I also just realized I wrote John Stewart, as in the host of the Daily Show. Note: don't watch Daily Show repeats while writing essays. My whole essay is filled with "Stewart" instead of "Stuart".

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 12 April 2003 04:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Ally, these are EXACTLY!!! the kind of notes i take! like if the germaine greer reading of 'jane eyre' sounds like something ludacris would say (or wouldn't say), i draw a picture of ludacris saying it! and everytime there's some conflict of opinion i put 'vs.' and whenever a comparison is made, there's a big '=' and there are random (and occasionally non-random) pictures of everything all over the page! everytime i need to study for a test, i have to photocopy someone else's stuff.

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Saturday, 12 April 2003 04:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Mitch, that someone would be me -- I took/take perfect(ly idiosyncratically shorthandesque) notes.

― Leee (Leee), Saturday, 12 April 2003 06:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh my god, the Ludacris thing is brill, I was just emailing a classmate today (different class tho) that the best way to learn would be if we were allowed to do our presentations taTu style.

FINISHED MY ESSAY. It's brill!

― Ally (mlescaut), Saturday, 12 April 2003 06:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Hm. In the fall, I'll be taking classes for the first time since last spring -- and the class I took last spring was a seminar with no tests, only papers based on material separate from the lectures/discussion, so class notes were minimal. It's been ... what the hell year is it? 2003. So it's been two years since I've taken a class where note-taking was really necessary, and since then my handwriting has become slower (because it's used only for grocery lists and signatures) and my memory has become far worse, especially short-term. I had actually been thinking about this over the last few days.

I print everything, and it's only especially legible if I do so in all caps, which doesn't help with the speed issue. The way I used to take notes varied by class .. I was in a history program, so for some classes I had to write down the friggin dates for everything, cause that's the simplest thing to test, so I'd like do a timeline thing on the lefthand page and write down stuff like "So-and-so, romantic approach to historiography, 18th c., kind of a dork."

I guess mostly I used notes to write down the shit I'd need to know and wasn't likely to remember off the top of my head from hearing it once -- theorists' names, specific chronology, things like that.

Actual primary purpose of note-taking: in any class shared with undergraduates, instructors assume not taking notes = thinking about cheerleader sex, and so will call on you to comment on the debate about dating the shift from henotheism to monotheism among the Hebrews with respect to Akhenaten. Therefore, either take notes (about anything at all) or head them off at the pass by blurting out, "Shake the pom-poms!" as soon as they point at you (they will not call on you again).

― Tep (ktepi), Saturday, 12 April 2003 07:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I quit taking notes after I realized I NEVER LOOK AT THEM.

Hobbes in "Calvin and Hobbes" a much better philosopher than Thomas Hobbes obv.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 12 April 2003 08:12 (twenty-two years ago)

"Until you stalk and overrun, you can't devour anyone."

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 12 April 2003 08:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I took notes at lectures during my first couple of weeks at university. After that, I didn't bother. Most of the lectures were general enough that half of the information I was writing down was the kind of stuff you'd get in the introduction to any relevant work. And when a lecturer had something interesting to say, I thought it was better to listen and think than to concentrate on scribbling.

Because they are spoken, the material in an hour long lecture amounts to about what you could read in five or ten minutes. There will rarely be enough substance to warrant spending time deciphering a page of notes later on.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Saturday, 12 April 2003 11:50 (twenty-two years ago)

it will come as surprise to no one that i wrote mainly in green ink from age 15-22

Extract:
"CONCLUDE: Given a finite of polynomials by using this process finitely often can can construct a field containing Q in which all these polys have roots [indeed can make them all factors completely a product of linear factors] [At each step the new field is a finite dimensional vector space over the old one"

I think I concentrated entirely in copying down what wasd written up on the blackboard, and never listened to the lecturer. I don't recall a solitary second of these lectures, from name or face of lecturer to look or feel of lecture hall.

I gave up lectures entirely in year two and worked from books.

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 12 April 2003 12:09 (twenty-two years ago)

my notes are colourful scrawls. I did do some reading but usually the notes in the lectures were enough to figure things out once I studied them.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 12 April 2003 12:13 (twenty-two years ago)

heh, yeah I hardly listened to lecturers: just give me the notes and stop babbling bcz i'll forget!

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 12 April 2003 12:15 (twenty-two years ago)

don't do notes, they're a pain, especially if you're tired and the laziest person on the planet. I think my academic enthusiasm went down the toilet when I lost my pencil case aged 13 and never bothered to get another one, thinking "fuck it I'll just keep a pen handy", never the same, a tragedy.

― Ronan (Ronan), Saturday, 12 April 2003 12:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I almost never made notes, but I think my exam results justifiably reflected this.

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Saturday, 12 April 2003 13:35 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't be bothered to dive into the stacks & pull them out, but I know for a fact that my Calculus II notes are chock full of little snide comments and kicks in the figurative crotch re: math stuff I should've remembered (cf. "ln (a/b) = ln a - ln b DUH!") I really should have a talk with myself, if only to find a way to make my notes less note-like. (Well, I do have those intermittent pseduo-Miro doodles up in the corner every so often.)

And, man, if I ever skipped out on lectures and went straight to book-learnin', I'd turn dumb w/ a capital B.

― David R. (popshots75`), Saturday, 12 April 2003 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Ally should post her essay here for our contemplation.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 12 April 2003 14:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to write down everything. Sometimes my handwriting would change hald way through the lecture, or I'd start drawing pictures. I'm bound to have some notes hanging about, I shall scan them.

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 12 April 2003 15:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Most of my lecturers provided printouts of the contents of their lecture. Those that didn't, I'd take notes - I am a very fast writer, and used sort of txt-style abbreviation, so I could copy a slide when no one else could. My exam revision, if any, was rereading these notes once the night before the exam.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 12 April 2003 15:17 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, I just took a look at my notes and the lecturer used to write everything before hand and put it up on the overhead projector and I just wrote it all down, or if it was really boring I would do this:

http://www.angelfire.com/wy/bby2k/notes.jpg

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 12 April 2003 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the scribbled out bit was a note to my friend, how junior school!

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 12 April 2003 15:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I always started taking notes with the best intentions but they would end up being a page with a really nice heading with a beautifully written date, class, topic and maybe 1 line about what the lecture was to be about and then a lot of pictures of ice cream cones and vegetables. But whenever my friends fell asleep in class i would always take the opportunity to write "I Love Porn" in really big sharpie letters on the back of their paper, notebook or binder.

― Carey (Carey), Saturday, 12 April 2003 20:37 (twenty-two years ago)

jel, what was going on that you were begging them to stop?

― Ally (mlescaut), Sunday, 13 April 2003 01:57 (twenty-two years ago)

I only ever write in uppercase, so it turns out rather amusing. I always had to turn down classmates who would ask to see my notes to catch up on days they missed - I was all like 'dude you wouldn't get anything out of them, I didn't really write anything to do with class'.

If I can find an old notebook I'll see if I can post an excerpt.

― Millar (Millar), Sunday, 13 April 2003 02:27 (twenty-two years ago)

good quality notes are underrated on this thread. I take them and they're very useful, not so much for learning stuff as for trying to figure out what topics the instructor likes to talk about and will include on the exam.

― Dan I., Sunday, 13 April 2003 02:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Laptops v. Handwriting FITE.

One lets you get more down (if you type fast). The other lets you think more (and will not involve Minesweeper).

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 13 April 2003 03:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I respect good notes, but I just can't take them. I kind of gave up on it.

― slutsky (slutsky), Sunday, 13 April 2003 04:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Ally, I'm afraid the "please stop" relates nothing more than a really really boring lecture on research methods!

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 13 April 2003 07:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to put little descriptions instead of helpful things like dates and lecture titles, these are my favourites;

this is the lecture where graeme went off on one about the bbc and told us he likes archery

this is the lecture where graeme got upset about his old school-mate who is now a celebrity hairdresser in london earning £50k pa: HAHAHAHAHA if he gets any more wound up he's going to CRY!

this is the lecture where xavier revealed himself to be a goth twat AGAIN: we don't CARE that you wrote the dvd blurb for driller killer

mike may be very smart but DOESNT HE HAVE TINY HANDS?!

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Sunday, 13 April 2003 08:11 (twenty-two years ago)

really? your notes were written like ILX questions???

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 13 April 2003 09:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't take notes, and never have, either acedemically or professionally. Actually paying attention works a bit better for me. Unfortunately, I have found that a lot of lawyers freak out utterly if you don't write down every word uttered and then add more for the hell of it -- when I used to care about that fact, I'd just write down "here's yer fuckin notes blabla ------" and some squiggles and doodles, and fight to pay attention.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Monday, 14 April 2003 09:22 (twenty-two years ago)

They actually were, aye jel, as crazy as it seems. "This is the lecture..." was a very common heading!

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Monday, 14 April 2003 09:26 (twenty-two years ago)

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