#notes tips

Hey! your notes are honestly so pretty 😍 Do you...”

Aww thank you! The way I do my textbook notetaking is I’ll read one section at a time, and then after I’ve read the section I’ll go back to take notes on what I think the main idea/most important parts are. If the section is really long, I’ll probably split it into two chunks to read. This is really important because if you note as you go along you’ll end up over-noting

In the actual notes I take are split by section, so for example in the picture “Party Eras in American History” in red was the overarching main section, and then the “1796-1824: The First Party System” was the subsection of that. Then I’ll use different colors for vocab, examples, legal stuff (like court cases or laws), and important info

I’m big on this, for most of my subjects I HAVE to rewrite my notes. 

1) Either my professor asks for neat and fancy notes 

or 

2) I want them to be extra neat and fancy. 

Now, it is important to know that you don’t have to rewrite your notes, if your original notes work for you then that’s amazing! You do you, whatever works best keep doing that! 

My biggest problem when rewriting my notes is time, because it does take extra amount of time. Also, since you’re making them look extra af, probably adding some drawings, using your special markers, etc. It’s gonna take even more time. Because of this I have found a couple of ways to make it easier on myself (and you). 

1. DON’T COLOUR CODE, UNDERLINE! 

This is really important, now ofc, if colour coding is something that works for you best then keep on doing; however, this would save you a bunch of time! Since you are not constantly switching between different pens or highlighters. Use two colours tops, and highlight after you are done with writing everything down. This way you’ll have to read your notes once more and you’ll even remember some of the stuff you’ve just written down. 

2. YOU’RE HANDWRITING DOESN’T MATTER!

But seriously, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. Don’t think about all the studyblr accounts and their respective owners and how magical their handwriting is, I mean props to them honestly! You guys are killing it; but it’s really not that important. Your handwriting is cool the way it is, and you shouldn’t stress about it, ever! 

3. STICKY NOTES WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

They’re awesome, because you can use different colours which can mean different things e.g. purple is for examples and red is for graphs. This is in a way colour coding, but I think that it’s a lot easier. They are not expansive as some highlighters or markers or pens. So that’s a way to save up. 

4. ASK FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S NOTES!

Don’t be ashamed to ask your classmates for their notes, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. You can take a picture of them on your phone or scan them with the Evernote Scannable App, it’s pretty easy to use. This way you’ll be able to combine them, I’m sure it happens that something slipped or you simply weren’t quick enough and so you didn’t get something written down. This way, you won’t have to worry about it. If all else fails, simply ask your teacher about it, they’re usually okay with it. 

1. Get a piece of paper or your notebook for the course

2. Set out all your midliners/highlighters/pens/whatever stationery you have or prefer

3. Write your title across the top in your best handwriting, calligraphy, or whatever

4. Make your hand cramp up from how hard you try to make your handwriting look like a computer font

5. Give up and decide it's not worth caring if your notes are pretty or not.

Subject title - First thing I do is I write down the subject title in colour. More than one subject can be discussed in one week. For example, in week three two subjects were discussed: ancient times and medieval periods. 

The picture below shows how the headers are built up: Ancient times 1.1 The Greek 1.2 Roman

In the file I make a table with two or three columns. This time I used two. Left column: questions, right column: main text. 

I read through my textbooks and write down all my headers. I use as much bullet points as possible, and I write definitions down like this:

Dates/events are written like this:

When I finish a chapter I try to write down the core message on the topic. I use this as a reference in my mind for when I take the test.  Core messages are written like this: 

My other posts on note taking:

A tip for students who type faster than they write or just generally prefer notes on the computer to paper notes: OneNote will save your ass. It’s free, it’s easy to use, and it’s helpful. 

It works well for diagrams and it’s very useful! It’s good for lectures and such, as you can get the information down and arrange it later. 

This is the red board I talked about earlier. And sorry for the reflection in the second photo. 

On the left is a sample page of notes. Certain parts are written in red, while the rest is in black. On the right is what happens after I put the red board over the page of notes: The red parts disappear and you can now test yourself by filling out the missing parts on a separate sheet of paper!