#enginehrd

UPDATE: Part 2 is on! Check it out here!

Heyooo everyone!

Yeah I’m finally doing stuff hahaha :D I still have some masterpost requests pending, so I decided to make one of them. This one was requested by @information-learner, so I apologize for the long wait and here you go!

Note: I know there are other requests, but I still have to figure out what to put in there... sorry and stay tuned!

Okay, so as you know, notes (!!) are one of the most important things you do during your studies. There are many types of notes and methods of taking them and tbh, there is no right way to take them cause human everyone is different and has different needs and patterns of thinking yaaay i love differences okay let’s stop this weird intro and get into the actual masterpost *cough cough*

... oh and it will focus mostly on handwritten notes, but due to my recent experience with notes on laptop, I will mention that, too ^^

And it got quite long so consider this as part one of... right now it looks like three :D

SOME GENERAL STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

Okay, so first of all. DON’T WRITE YOUR CLASS NOTES IN SENTENCES UNLESS IT’S A GIVEN DEFINITION. Never ever. And I’m gonna tell you why. Firstly, it’s too long. Straight up you’re wasting time with it and probably you’re gonna miss the next thing that your teacher says. And you don’t want that. So no. Secondly, as I said before, every person has a different thinking process. Which means that someone might think of and say a collocation of words that you would never use in any way. Which means that you write a sentence which might really confuse you in the future. So please do yourself a favor and write in bullet points.

Again, I’m emphasizing that I mean class notes. It actually is a good idea to come home, take out your notes and summarize them in sentences OF YOUR OWN aka how would you yourself say it. It is really a cool method to kinda develop your own thinking process, find out about phrases you are okay with using and also finding a way of explaining the thing by yourself and you develop a better understanding of the subject leading to actually thinking about it better and being able to analyze it. Which is great and let’s be real, this is gonna help you in your future studies, especially at uni.

The second thing I want to say is that you should choose a pen that you can write with comfortably. Writing a lot hurts, actually, but if you have a good pen, it won’t hurt that much. I know it’s quite difficult to find the perfect pen, but try everything, from the cheapest ballpoint pens to whatever ink pen or like anything, just make sure your hand won’t go crazy from hurting. And choose a notebook you like. Just to motivate yourself to actually write in it.

And lastly, colors. Brain needs them. I hugely recommend using colors in your notes, because let’s be real, colorless notes are dull and boring. Colors help you associate information and retain them better. But don’t overdo it. In general, it’s better to write your notes with a blue pen and use a maximum of three additional colors. Too much colors lead to confusion about what the hell is actually important on this page??? yeah okay. Anyway, this of course depends on the person, as there are people who need to use more colors in their notes. Generally speaking, you should have some kind of a color-coding system.

Okay this is getting really long so I decided to split it up and make a series! Wow :D so I’ll continue and I’ll add links to the rest of it so stay tuned everyone!!! 

Part 2: ACTUAL TYPES OF NOTES

Part 3: PAPER VS. LAPTOP? MATCH START!

Other masterposts by meee~~

Study tips masterpost

How to bullet journal masterpost

Study methods

Heyooo everyone!

I am back with part 2 of this masterpost series yaaayy so let’s gooo notes are waitiiiing

Check out part 1!

There are so many types of notes and methods how to take them and I’m not gonna lie, covering all of them would be impossible, especially when most of these types are not known cause human everyone is different and has different needs and do stuff differently yaaay I love differences wait how did i get here *looks around in confusion* Anyway, I’ll make a deal with you here ‘kay? I’ll sum up the types that are mostly used in terms of  how you do it and for which subjects and I might add some personal experience with the type and if you have your own kinda method or like something that you do, please do send me asks and messages and reply to this post and tell me more about what you do! I think it would be really interesting to compile all of your methods in a big post afterwards! So please please??

Anyway let’s start~~

MIND-MAPPING

This is a method which is used mostly by visual learners. Basically you write your main idea/topic in the center and then make kinda branches from it to expand it and add other subtopics and ideas, of course with using as much color as possible. Mind-mapping is an awesome technique for connecting ideas - you can do this to get a better understanding of the links between the topics you have. I’m not a big fan of mind-mapping, since it unfortunately looks like a mess to me, but I do use it and that’s when I write essays. I put the topic in the middle and think of ideas/arguments that I can use in the essay. It’s cool cause it doesn’t get as messy as if I was writing actual notes and also, I can see how many ideas I got and what I want to cover in my essay. Anyway you can use mind-maps in biology, chemistry, but also like almost anything else :D

FLASHCARDS

Flashcards are the key to mastering vocabulary. Like legit. You put the word on one side, turn the card and put the definition and examples on the other side. Easy as it is. Actually, you can use it to summarize topics, too, which is awesome and you can quiz yourself by reading the term and then explaining it and things like that. I don’t use flashcards that often, but they really helped me a long time ago, when I took a law class and it was full of weird words :D so this method is useful in any subject which uses terms - biology, law, languages (I was learning kanji with flashcards), physics, history… anything really

WORD-DEFINITON

This is a notebook version of the flashcards system and it’s done like this: you take a smaller notebook and on the left page, you write your term and on the right page, you explain it. Easy. Or you can also take a bigger notebook and split the page into two columns and do the same thing – in the left one you write your term and in the right one you explain it.

OUTLINE METHOD

This one is the easiest thing you can do. You take a piece of paper (or a notebook) and a pen, write a heading, make a bullet point and just write. That’s it guys that’s everything. Actually not really, because you can make subheadings! And extra types of bullet points and lists and everything! And not only is this the easiest method, it’s also the most effective one. You can use it in any subject and it’s just really fast to write your notes. I actually use some kind of an outline method with additional things like adding a column for more stuff and textbook notes etc. and tbh after trying the cornell method I can say that I prefer this one better and I’m going to tell you more about why when I talk about the cornell method.

CORNELL METHOD

Here it is, the famous cornell notetaking method! What you do is that you basically split your page into three sections - a column on the left for questions, topics and subheadings, a section at the bottom of the page for the summary and a section in the middle (basically what is left of the page) for your actual notes. And here it gets creative. 

You can write your notes either in a format of question-answer, so you put the question in the left column and the answer in the notes section. That means you write in sentences and if you remember what I said in part 1 of this masterpost series, please do this only when revising at home.

You can also write your notes in bullet points, which means you can actually use this at school. Then you write your topics/vocab in the left column.

And now let’s focus on the summary section. This is basically the reason I stopped using the cornell method. The summary section is cool when your topic perfectly fits in one page. But when your topic is on ten pages and you kinda have to summarize every single one, it gets first of all annoying (at least for me) and secondly, I just get confused about how should I summarize it? Should I sum up every single page or can I just mix it? But wait can I write about a completely different thing on this page?

Basically, I got confused and omitted the summary section and kept the column on the left for like additional notes from my teachers. But then I took away the column, too, and that was simply because the outline was enough for all of my subjects (almost, except for czech, i was just lazy hahaha rip me) and most of my professors don’t say additional stuff so... that’s how I ended exactly where I began :D

That’s everything for this part! Make sure to reply/send messages and asks with how you take notes, I’m really looking forward to those and I’ll be making a post from these!

PART 1: GENERAL STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

PART 3: PAPER VS. LAPTOP? MATCH START!

Other masterposts by meee~~

Study tips masterpost

How to bullet journal masterpost

Study methods

hey you! thankk yooouuu omg!!! i dont know man, there are so many studyblrs n i’ve found only a few engblrs. everyone here is sweeet so check out my blogroll, they’re all cool peeps. here are some engblrs i’ve discovered on tumblr :

@studying-engineering @ayetstudies @enjoying-ce @femgineering @etudestial

url: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆icon: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★theme: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆content: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★original posts (if applicable): ★ ★ ★ ★ ★comments: rapunzel, rapunzel, let down your hair, so that i may climb thy golden stair! btw 35-40 minutes is so long oml i’m tired from just 5 minutes of brushing my hair :’(