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- by Charlotte King
- In Other
Posted Feb. 9, 2015
Writing Postgrad Notes You Can Revise From
QUICK! The lecturer is looking straight at me! Better nod my head and write something down. I know, I’ll just write the last thing she said. OK, she’s stopped looking. This is a mental process the grand majority of us have gone through, some of us fairly regularly. And this is why when it comes to revising our notes are not up to their task, and we find ourselves studying concepts that had already been explained to us, and well as missing all of the huge hints about the exam that lecturers always put in their lectures to reward those who turn up and listen every time.
This is because the way we traditionally write notes only slightly improves our memory retention rates. Just simply writing out your professor’s best lines as you hear them, then not looking at your notes for months is not going to help you at all. Without their context and your short-term memory, these bit and pieces do not really add up to much at all other than the realisation you have wasted hours of learning time. So unless you can shorthand entire lectures and seminars (and even this is not a tried and tested method), you need a better note writing method.
Although we have covered quick note-taking fixes before , a more radical change in your note taking could be more beneficial. There are hundreds of these out there, but my personal favourite is the Cornell Method. Named after the eponymous university where its founder taught Education , it is a three step system of taking notes that has proven effectiveness for subjects where learned knowledge needs to be applied.
You start by splitting your page into three, with sections taking up a third of the page at the bottom, and a third of the page on the left. Of these, you take your normal notes during the lecture or seminar itself in the large section left in the top right after drawing these two lines, always remembering to head the page with the course title, date and topic. Then, as soon as possible after class you fill in the left section, pulling out the key phrases and if you can single words from your notes - things like dates, people’s names, case studies, and names of the key concepts being discussed. You then write a summary in proper sentences in the section at the bottom that addresses all of the information in the left column.
Doing this in this way means that when revision time comes, you already have a neat summary of everything you’ve learned, as well as list of the key dates, names et al. that need to be researched further, taking away hours of page flipping looking for the name of ‘that one guy who worked with that girl and did that thing once that did something’. If this is a little too regimented for you, however, there is still a lot you can take away from the Cornell Method without having to rule all of your notebooks into three sections. If you take anything away from it, it is the importance of summarising what you have learned quickly after you have learnt it, while it is in your short term memory and still makes complete sense to you. How you do this is up to you - you can do it Cornell style, recording yourself summarising it or even draw everything out in an elaborate comic strip….whatever, just make sure that you know that the key to writing notes you can revise from is writing a second set of summary notes.
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This is because the way we traditionally write notes only slightly improves our memory retention rates. Just simply writing out your professor’s best lines as you hear them, then not looking at your notes for months is not going to help you at all. Without their context and your short-term memory, these bit and pieces do not really add up to much at all other than the realisation you have wasted hours of learning time. So unless you can shorthand entire lectures and seminars (and even this is not a tried and tested method), you need a better note writing method.
Although we have covered quick note-taking fixes before , a more radical change in your note taking could be more beneficial. There are hundreds of these out there, but my personal favourite is the Cornell Method. Named after the eponymous university where its founder taught Education , it is a three step system of taking notes that has proven effectiveness for subjects where learned knowledge needs to be applied.
You start by splitting your page into three, with sections taking up a third of the page at the bottom, and a third of the page on the left. Of these, you take your normal notes during the lecture or seminar itself in the large section left in the top right after drawing these two lines, always remembering to head the page with the course title, date and topic. Then, as soon as possible after class you fill in the left section, pulling out the key phrases and if you can single words from your notes - things like dates, people’s names, case studies, and names of the key concepts being discussed. You then write a summary in proper sentences in the section at the bottom that addresses all of the information in the left column.
Doing this in this way means that when revision time comes, you already have a neat summary of everything you’ve learned, as well as list of the key dates, names et al. that need to be researched further, taking away hours of page flipping looking for the name of ‘that one guy who worked with that girl and did that thing once that did something’. If this is a little too regimented for you, however, there is still a lot you can take away from the Cornell Method without having to rule all of your notebooks into three sections. If you take anything away from it, it is the importance of summarising what you have learned quickly after you have learnt it, while it is in your short term memory and still makes complete sense to you. How you do this is up to you - you can do it Cornell style, recording yourself summarising it or even draw everything out in an elaborate comic strip….whatever, just make sure that you know that the key to writing notes you can revise from is writing a second set of summary notes.
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