Note Taking - Blog Posts
life has been so kind to me lately
Did really well on my 2nd human physiology exam!!! I'm really proud of myself cause I went in really tired and not having studied much the night before, but I think studying throughout the weeks beforehand helped a lot!!
Had another night of drinking with my friends and I felt so happy and at peace with the fact that my friends and I are living our lives the way we should 🙂
Haven't done much school work recently besides the bare minimum, but it still feels okay since I am keeping on top of it all and not falling too far behind
I applied to Pharmacy school!!! Still waiting to hear back, but I am not too worried since I have a guaranteed interview because of my program I am in. The actual interview is gonna be the hard part 🫠🫠 Hoping it goes well, but my program directors say I will do fine!!
life lately <3
- visited the science museum with my mom to donate blood, was very disappointed not to see any bacteria exhibits
- finally made a friend in my human physiology lecture!!! she got my number and we did our group quiz together :) she is pre-nursing
- drank for the first time and learned that my anxiety disappears when im tipsy-ish, also pet a stray cat
- had my first human physiology lab, not too sure about my group mates so far... but we'll see!
life is going really well, but i miss a lot of my friends who i dont see as often now.
t-1 year til pharmacy school starts hopefully. my application is due in october and my interview will be in december!! so excited!!!!
trying to grind hard so that my boyfriend can be my house husband one day
life is good 🙂
hoping I can keep this momentum up and last the semester without burning out!!
08.21.22
The first week’s been pretty cool, the teachers can be intimidating but the experience is fun. I think I accidentally grew into those people who take cool notes with memo pads, annotations, and highlights during class hehe <33
School’s about to start in two days, does anyone have any tips for taking notes?
January Study Challenge
day 22 - do you use color-coding? explain your system!
yes!! i have a very elaborate system :) red is for circling notes that go together. yellow is for definitions. green is for numbers/formulas/dates/equations. teal is for highlighting subtitles. light blue is for people/names. darker blue is for sub-subtitles 😂 purple is for important things. pink is for examples. red PEN is for the most important things. and lastly, purple pen is for parts of the body (i rly only use that for anatomy lol). this may seem like a lot of work, but it’s really not, and it genuinely helps me find stuff within my (usually) very detailed notes. :)
p.s. sry for the super dark picture, i have trash lighting in my room
Hybrid Note Taking Style
A note taking method that blends the best of paper and digital note taking that I’ve been exploring lately. So far it’s working really well for me :) Hope it helps!
Hybrid Note Taking Method
Problems with other note taking systems
Each note taking system has its pros and cons. Here are some of the problems I found with (fully) paper and (fully) digital note taking systems.
Paper
Can’t use the search function on your notes.
Can’t add images and other types of digital files easily.
Difficult to keep overview between notebooks.
Can’t share these as easily as digital notes.
Digital
Not as ‘romantic’.
Sometimes less engaging.
Lack of physical presence can lead to you forgetting about it.
Can be more difficult to do things like sketching, making schemes, making illustrations etc.
Benefits of Hybrid
I like using hybrid methods because they bring you the best of both worlds.
Easily searchable.
Information in your notes is traceable.
Makes it easier to find and carry out actions e.g. finding extra info.
Doesn’t damage books.
Allows you to embed different types of files.
What you’ll need
Source material (e.g. book, academic paper)
Any kind of notebook :)
Digital note-taking app → I like Notion (it’s free).
Step 1 - Read & number the material
As you go, use a pencil to lightly put numbers into the margins whenever you deem something worthy of noting down or remembering. This will help you locate the source of specific parts of your notes later.
Step 2 - Write Q&A-style notes
Write the information down in question-and-answer style. Come up with useful questions that link to the material you want to remember (e.g. Q → What is the main problem with using platform-based planning for new ventures? A → Assumptions underlying the plan are used as fact rather than best-guess estimates to be tested and questioned). Use the numbers you placed in the margin of the pages to specify the source of the information you used for each answer.
Example → Chapter 1 page 27 note 3 becomes 1.p27.3
Step 3 - Write actions as you go (Supporting notes)
Supporting notes
Write down your thoughts, anything you’re curious about, things you want to look up, things you’re confused about, actions you’ve been inspired to do, etc. For example → ?m Maybe I can apply this to my visualization assignment? / ! Look up what 'plurality of the future’ is / fex Organizational transformation through design. I find this a great way to support and manage the learning process.
Action key
Keep a small action key in which you have an overview of what your action marks mean (e.g. ?m→ questions to myself, f → find, fex → find example, ?? → I don’t get it, ! → general actions)
Don’t be afraid to customize your actions!
What you’ll get
Actionable notes
Your paper notes will contain a structured and easy to read overview of actionable items that came up during the reading. This can be questions you need answered, reminders to find specific information, etc. This will make them a lot harder to forget to do!
Easily traceable sources
With the codes you’ll be able to tell easily and quickly where the information you’ve written in your notes came from.
Searchable & review-ready notes
Notes will be (mostly) made in question-and-answer style. This will allow you to easily review using active recall. All you need to do is cover/hide the answer and you can check how well you truly know the material.
Thanks for reading!
some of my favorite notes 🤩
i'm sorry i didn't updated lately 😪
study, study & study
what app are you using to freehand write on your ipad with a stylo/pen, if you don’t mind me asking? thanks so much in advance!
Mainly using Goodnotes 5 + apple pencil first gen. for everything! 💖 I love this app because it offers a lot of options. + I think the investment of those 10 or 11$ is totally worth it✨💗 I’ve been using it for 2 years now and they still make huge updates which make it even easier to take handwritten notes!
Something I worked on the past few days~
I’m really proud of myself how this first attempt of making a digital notebook turned out!🥰🌸
Would you be interested in getting a notebook like this for free? If you are interested, leave a comment and maybe soon I will open up a etsy store where you can download my creations (or maybe even buy something in the future)✨
Another gloomy/rainy day of studying!✨
I wish I could write as fast as in the timelapse in real life🥺🥲
Getting stuff done on a rainy day~ ✨📚
What are you up to today?😊
Tbh I’m currently thinking about starting a study youtube channel, but I’m still hesitated bc I’m scared of what other people will think about it. + I don’t know if I can post consistently on there, because making videos is a whole lot of work. I’m glad that I’m able to post on here somehow regularly😅
I’m really uncertain about what to do…😵💫
What do you think about this? Would you enjoy watching some kind of study vlogs? Or “study with me”?🥺
Good afternoon! Back with some pink notes 🩷 these are my absolute essentials for notes!!
Kokuyo campus notebook in B5, Kacogreen pens & unipin fine liner for titles :)
how I take notes on non fiction books
I recently made a post on my study method, and decided to make a whole separate post on my note taking method. The structure of the notes I write doesn't vary too much from my lecture notes to things I might have to read. A couple of useful informations you might want to know before I start actually talking about note writing is that I am mainly focused on studying history (tho I have had other humanities exams in my degrees), and that I study for oral exams in which the material is mainly composed of non fiction books, but sometimes include articles as well as lecture notes. Somehow I have also failed to mention that I am speaking about HANDWRITTEN NOTES. I only do handwritten notes, I don't work well digitally, so keep that in mind. And with this being said brace yourselves for a very long post. The bullet points I will be making are not really in a specific order and I will be including a few pictures too.
The first step when I am working on the materials for an exam is to figure out in which order I will be reading (and writing notes) the books. This hasn't really much to do with the notes themselves, but it's important to know which of your materials is more general and what other things go more in depth, so that you don't struggle too much while studying. Another plan related thing I always do is to write down each chapter of the book I have to study on my bullet journal and how many pages it is so I can plan my studying more comfortably. If the chapters are very long, and divided in subchapters I sometimes also write those down.
The goal of the notes I write is to fully take the place of the book, so they tend to be very detailed and long. I do this because the very act of writing is part of my study method, and working on things I have written down in my own words is just much better for the type of learner I am. So basically I read the book only once, then it goes back on the shelf and I work exclusively on the notes. This means my notes need to be detailed and well organized.
My method is to read a chapter, underlining important stuff as I am reading, and then right after I am done reading I work on the notes for that chapter before moving onto the next. I do this because it makes the note writing more effortless, I am fresh with informations I just read and I basically just need to skim over what I have underlined.
On underlining, since it is so important. I underline everything I will be including in my notes, it might seem much as sometimes it consists of full paragraphs, instead of key words. But this is okay because my notes I don't just copy and paste.
To create useful notes you need to be re-elaborating the informations. You need to read, understand what you read, and be able to write it down using your own words. That way the notes will be easier to review, they will often be composed of shorter sentences, and by doing so you are also actively making writing part of your studying and not just a mindless activity.
Personally I don't work well with full pages summaries, I need the text to be visually broken into sentences/small paragraphs, and I use a lot of symbols as well as abbreviations.
Symbols and abbreviations are in a way part of your very own language when you are writing notes, you tend to develop these with time, but they are so useful. I personally use different types of arrows, all caps words, position of the text in the page, different methods of highlighting and abbreviations (usually for words that come up often like country names, for example Italy becomes ita, France becomes fr, etc.).
Your notes need to be useful for you, they don't have to necessarily be comprehensible for another person (which means you can and will fuck up sentence structure because sometimes skipping a couple of words makes the notes shorter and still understandable), and they do not have to be pretty. They should be as tidy as possible, but again that might change from person to person, I have some very messy looking notes that make total sense to me. With time you'll learn what works best for you.
I have a visual memory so as I mentioned titles, highlighters, all caps, the placement on the page and other similar things are very important in my notes. I cannot fully exapain some of these things because some definitely only make sense to me in the moment (like the words I choose to write in all caps, or the way I highlight things).
I like to have a clear chapter and subchapter break (so that in case I need to refer back to the book it's super effortless). I like to write those with a red pen, usually the chapter title is in all caps and the subchapter in coursive, but it really depends.
I use only two highlighters in each set of notes yellow for dates, and the colour I associate with the book/the subject of the book (I have synesthesia I don't make the rules when it comes to colours). This of course might change depending your preferences and on the element of your notes you want to focus on. I like to have spacific colour for dates and time periods, because of course while studying history that is a fundamental element. If you are focusing on other subjects you might want to have a specific colour for names, or other elements.
I like to leave a big side margin to add either key words (especially in lecture notes since they might be messier and jump around informations more often), or additional information in a second time (sometimes it happens, after you read another book, or attended a particular lecture you have to add a couple of sentences and I rather have a blank space that never gets used rather than no space at all for emergencies).
I honestly mentioned everything that came to mind right away, but since note writing is now basically a mindless skill I have been practicing for years I surely forgot about something. I might end up adding to this post in the future or write another one. My note-writing method has also changed a lot thought the years from high school to university, it's a skill I have been perfecting for the past decade. This to say that depending on what you are working on things might change, and by experimenting with different things you might find out things that work very well for you. If you have any questions on specific things I didn't mention or that wen't clear my inbox is always open and I am more than happy to help.
Since this post is already very very long I am adding the pictures below the cut
Example of a page of notes before and after highlighting
Example of symbols and structure of the notes and the way I highlight things (in which you'll hopefully be able to understand my handwriting, and in which there might be some spelling errors but alas that often happens in my real notes as well so if there are any it's for the sake of accuracy lmao). If I end up adding informations on the margins I always use a pen of a different color so I can tell which informations I got from what source (ex. main notes from lecture, colorful notes from additional article).
Example of messier notes in which the main text in black are the notes I took during lectures and the additional colorful text was added while writing the materials (I rarely do this, it usually happens when the lectures follow a book precisely, which happens when we have to study books or summaries written by the professor). As you can see I often use post it notes to add more writing space, and sometime I even use them to create visually separated sections. If I end up adding some drawings I also usually like to have them on post it notes so they stand out more (and if you are wondering why the hell would an history student need drawings it's usually either because I need a map or a region/state to mark things out, or when studying for archaeology exams I often needed visual references, for example to identify different types of vases or decorations).
30 March (the first day of classes)
I have mixed feelings about this quarter. On one hand I’ll be receiving a degree and moving on to an actual university. On the other I am faced with the fact that I won’t see many of my friends for quite some time after I graduate (not to mention the new course load and ops tempo)
In all I’m happy to be back, and look forward to future productivity
Stay up ✌🏿
🎧 Trappin in Paradise 78 - Smooth sounds
What. Do. You. Mean.
A journal app for when you need to process this hellsite. Try Day One, or Pikaman will haunt you in your sleep.