Taking notes is an undervalued skill. For most students, taking notes isn’t even practiced until the Sixth Form and for others, until university. If you’ve spent years mindlessly copying from a blackboard, sitting in a lecture with a blank sheet of paper and no instructions on what to write down can be daunting. At my secondary school, the transition from spoon-feeding to independent note-taking came about rather abruptly: I remember dozing through a Year 10 English class, listening to my teacher lecturing on ‘Lord of the Flies’, waiting for her to hand me the booklet with all of it nicely written down, when all of a sudden she slammed her ruler on my desk, arched a mean eyebrow and screeched ‘Have you a perfect memory? Or have I yet to say something interesting enough for you to write down?’ I was alarmed and rather frightened, and hastily pulled out a pen and paper. She resumed her monologue, and I developed blisters on the side of my hand from frantically scribbling down everything she said.
There are three key mistakes people make when taking notes: writing too much, writing too little, and writing nonsense. I sat next to a girl in English who, every once in a while, would go into autopilot and write notes like ‘the imagery of flies reminds us of decay, death, stop chewing gum Harriet…’ I myself used to take too few notes, and at the end of the year found myself faced with the task of decoding ‘The war (which war?) lasted long time, led to others, see notes (which notes???)’. Taking notes should be about making life easier for yourself. After years of experience, this is my advice:
1) Invest in good quality paper – there’s no point making the effort to take notes if they will have disintegrated by the end of the year.
2) Don’t waste money on a fancy pen, in the bustle of school you’ll probably lose it. A biro will do.
3) Before writing down information ask yourself, ‘Do I need to know this?’ If you do, write it down. If you’re unsure, ask ‘Do I have time to write this down?’ If you do, write it.
4) Learn symbols for common words, for example ‘&’
5) Bullet points are your best friend. Memorizing paragraphs is very difficult, bullet points however, are a piece of cake.
6) Be specific with references, if you are referring to something from a textbook include the title and page number.
7) Be neat, there’s nothing worse than getting to the end of the year and finding that you can’t read any of your notes.
8) Keep yourself organised. Keep your notes in a folder, buy dividers and group notes together by subject.
9) Practice. The more you take notes the easier it gets!
Written by Katya Sikuade