I am making a post about the ways that I use to take notes and learn new topics/build off of ones I already know. If you have ones I have not listed here please feel free to add one to it!
Disclaimer: These tips are personal to me and come from years of struggling in class with multiple undiagnosed mental health issues as well as undiagnosed Autism. This being said, one or two, or all of these tips may not work for you. Every single person deals with those issues differently, so you may need to find a different way that works best, or better, for you. Do not take these as law. Please give them a try if you believe they could be beneficial, but do not be afraid to change them to watch your own learning style or abandon them if they are not helpful. You are your own unique person, embrace that. (also it may seem like I am shitting on the studyblr way of studying or their aesthetic. This is not the case, just many people with mental health issues and/or learning disorders do not find that way of studying useful or even harmful to their learning abilities. If those methods of studying help you, then good!!! I am happy for you! they do not help me though, so that is why I’m sharing)
Please forgive any spelling and grammar mistakes I may make.
1) Do not use more than 3 different colors when taking notes. Yes, I am including highlighters in this.
Look at that, very pretty and a very nice aesthetic. But what are your eyes going to focus on? How is your brain going to separate the really important information from the added fluff that makes its way into the course?
It can’t. Stick to 3 colors. This can be a red and black pen and a yellow highlighter, or a pencil, a pen, and a highlighter. Keep it simple, do not go overboard or you may overload your brain.
(use this same general idea when taking notes on a computer. use the lowest amount of text colors possible
2) When highlighting, the less you highlight the better.
For the same reason listed above, the more you have highlighted on a page, the less your brain will be able to differentiate between important information to remember and things that can be pushed aside.
Again, not to shit on the studyblr aesthetic, but if these are your notes for a class what do your eyes focus on in this picture? Is all the information here of equal value to you? Are you unintentionally putting more importance on certain information when you don’t need to?
As nice and pretty as this stuff looks, it works against you.
As an example, here are my math notes
The information on this page is not all of equal value to me, to it is all written differently. I have the example graphs in the most color because I learn best from what I see and not what I read. That information lets me know I need that to be the focal point of my page. Below, I have the written definitions of each type of slope written in pencil, with the name of the type of slope I am defining highlighted. I use a combination of what I know to be the way I learn best and knowledge of the order of importance for the information on the page, to take my notes in a way that helps me learn best.
3) In general, don’t worry about what your notes look like.
Your notes do not have to be textbook quality. Your notes looking pretty does not get you extra points in class or give you bragging rights in any way.
This is what I struggle the most with personally. I want my notes to look perfect! I want the lines to be straight and parallel and the angles to be exact for what they need to be.
In the end, though, this is incredibly time-consuming and draining. When you have a learning disability or a mental health problem you only have so much energy that you can use to focus and take in important information. Do not waste it trying to make your aesthetic work perfectly or for your silent inner desire to have the prettiest and best notes in class. Your notes are only going to be seen by you. Your notes only have to make sense to you. You have absolutely nothing to prove to anyone else in the world, that can be proved by what your notes look like. Let your handwriting be messy and near illegible, as long as you can read it then it is fine.
In the end, the only thing that matters is that you understand the notes that you are taking.
4) Let your notes be long, but if you feel like they are too long then go with that feeling and shorten them
Personally, I find the best way to do this is to take notes on all the stuff I believe is important. Doing this sometimes leaves me with notes that have more pages then the thing that I am required to read. When this happens, reread your notes and summarize them.
With this being said, notes can be long. Keep in mind that your notes are a summary of the important information in the material provided for you. If the material you have is 100 pages long, you may have 20 pages of notes. That is ok.
If you feel like your 20 pages of information is too much tho, reread your notes and try to summarize the important information in them.
Tips for summarizing:
1) read all of what you are going to summarize over
2) do not summarize from there, break it into smaller chunks (typically 2 or 3 paragraphs worth of information, but can be smaller or bigger if that works better for you)
3) Read the first chunk of writing and when you are done (without looking back at the information you just read) write down a short summary of what you remember there. (it is important not to go back to the text you just read while you are writing your summary, this prevents you from adding many direct quotes and forces you to restate the information in your own words)
4) Once you have finished your summary, compare it to the text chunk to make sure you did not miss any big details or important information.
5) remember that your summary, and your notes on the text, will be different from the people around you. This does not mean you are wrong and they are right or that they are wrong and you are right. Two people are capable of reading the same text and come out with different understands, both are right and wrong in their own way. It is ok to have a different understanding than your peers and even your teachers at times. Meanings of things change over time, the black curtains will not always symbolize the inner demons of the writer, sometimes they are just black because the author fucking said they were.
6) When summarizing a large piece of text (may not work with personal notes, and typically best for academic papers) read the into and conclusion first (or the last page and/or paragraph). These have the most information in the most compact form. They are a good way to get a basic understanding of what you are going to read and (specifically the concluding paragraph/page) often where the author summarizes all the information in the previous text in the most compact form. This way, if you do not finish reading all the pages of the text, you can still go to class with some sort of understanding of what is going on.
5) if you are having trouble understanding the text that you are reading, copy and paste it into google translate
(or try to find it online and then copy and paste it into google translate)
This one is relying on the fact that you have the information electronically if you do not try and find someone who can read it to you or download a voice recorder on your phone, read it to your self, then listen back.
Google translate is the easiest text to speech program most people have access too. Just set it to translate English to English (or your language to your language) and have it read to you what you are trying to read.
It will come out choppy and awkward sounding, but it will allow you to both hear and see the information at the same time. Sometimes this can be a good way to work around a burnt out feeling when it seems like the letter groupings on the page or the screen just won’t make words in your brain.
6) If something does not make sense, ask to compare notes with a classmate/peer or go to your teacher
Earlier I stated that you have nothing to prove by your notes, and that still stands. But, if you are struggling with understanding how what you took notes on, fits into the greater picture, then ask for help.
Do not let yourself fall behind just because you are afraid of seeming like an idiot. Even the smartest people ask the dumbest questions. Not everything is immediately obvious to everyone. This is how you learn.
If I'm your savior, then you're mine. 