Five Tips on Taking Notes and Remembering Them
Color Coordinate
Most highlighters today come in the standard yellow but there’s also the pink, orange and blue ones. Using colors not only helps your eyes quickly find key points you want to remember but it also helps associate those points to that specific color adding another layer of recognition. Also be sure to highlight the stuff you don’t know as it can be a helpful reminder to study them later. Using colors isn’t at all a new method of learning so why stop after elementary school?
Don’t Use the Entire Page
Some people fill up their notebooks like they were novels. Don’t do that unless you have completely mastered everything in your notebook. It’s important to leave space by skipping a few lines not just to create a clean format but to have a place for writing later. Any good student knows to go over their notes and most of the time you will have to make additional notes next to existing ones. Also, write on one side of the page so you can easily lay down all of your notes side by side and look over them. Before I became a good student, (it does happen overnight) I wrote my notes on the front and the back which led to annoying moments of constantly having to flip over pages. It’s a little thing but any sane human being will usually prefer having information laid out neatly in front of them instead of having to flip things over.
The BIGGER The BETTER
When it comes to really important info, I like to write BIG. You know, when the professor is nice enough to say, “This is going to be on the exam.” I like to write those things in massive chicken scratch. Why not? Why should we stay within the confines of those silly lines? College-ruled this, college-ruled that, who cares? Making the key points huge, or at least bigger than the smaller fluff adds another layer to our notes and enhances the colors we’ve already placed on them. And no, I’m not saying fill up half the page with a single quote but do feel free to go nuts and use up an extra line or two to emphasize the crucial stuff.
Draw Stuff
If you’re not into giant, colorful letters happily living in your notebook then you can always draw little symbols like stars or bullet points to emphasize the key points. And the drawing doesn’t have to end there, you can draw out flow charts of information or diagrams if you need to, circle things and make that Quotient Rule formula look like it’s in the middle of a burning inferno if you have to. Sometimes professors and textbooks just don’t provide the visual aid students need and when that happens it’s nice to draw it out. And even if there are available diagrams or charts, drawing them again helps refresh the memory. Be creative!
Edit and Rewrite Your Notes
If you go through all this trouble to take your notes but never look at them again after class, what’s the point? Be sure to go back through your notes and edit them as if it were some research paper worth half your class grade. During the editing process be sure to organize the notes by cutting things out, rearranging words or ideas, and making sure you know the key points including the ones you didn’t know. Some students may make quick edits here and there but when I edit my notes, it becomes a complete overhaul and I end up rewriting them entirely. For me it’s like literally hammering the information into my brain consciously and subconsciously. The fact that I’m writing them again puts extra emphasis on all of the notes which can only help retain the information.
