Overheard a librarian say something about note-taking that clicked for me

I was at the downtown library last Saturday waiting for a friend, and I caught the reference librarian telling a student, "Your notes should look like a conversation, not a transcript." I had been trying to write down everything from a lecture on wound care for my certification exam, and it was taking forever. That made me try just jotting down key points in my own words for the next module. Finished in half the time and actually remembered the details better. Anyone else find a simple phrase like that that changed how you study?

2 comments

2 Comments

mason.mary28d ago

Okay so that librarian was totally right. I used to write down every single word in my history class and I still couldn't remember anything for the test. Switched to writing like I was explaining it to my mom and my grades went way up. Like for the Civil War I just wrote "North mad about slavery, South left, big fight, North won." That's all I needed.

victor_perry9028d ago

Three whole weeks trying that "every single word" method and I'm pretty sure I've got carpal tunnel and still failed the test. Is it really that serious to need a whole different note-taking philosophy? Like just read the textbook and stare at the timeline for 10 minutes, that works just fine for me. My buddy Mark tried that simplified thing for his anatomy class and ended up mixing up the femur and the fibula because he wrote "leg bone connected to other leg bone." Sometimes you actually need the details and cutting them down just makes you sound like a badly informed toddler.