Taking notes
I am trying to figure out a consistent system for taking notes. I need to take lecture notes, idea notes, and notes on books and articles. I also need to take notes on music, which is much more slippery. Cornell notes aren’t much use to me now because I don’t spend much time in lecture (though I sometimes recommend them to my students - OR the take notes, then ASAP, go make an outline from your lecture notes and clarify anything muddy). I write in my own books, but my notes are not super helpful for finding stuff later, because I tend to underline everything (it keeps me focused as I read). But I often don’t own the books I read — they’re from the library or belong to a friend or professor. I also found myself using .pdf articles on my laptop more often this semester — and not wanting to print something out.
One of the most helpful article-note-taking ideas I’ve encountered was actually our “journal” assignment for a women’s studies/media class — write down any notes on the article (which are just freeform), then in another section, summarize the author’s main point in a few sentences, and finally, in a third section, write your thoughts and/or discussion questions.
I have to constantly remind myself — especially if I’m taking notes for a paper — to always write down bibliographical information first, and keep track of page numbers, and put anything directly quoted IN quotation marks with page numbers. I also try (and often forget) to try to not write while I’m looking at the page, to instead rephrase what the author is saying in my own words, so as not to unwittingly plagiarize later.
The answer? I haven’t figured it out yet. I actually don’t think there is ONE answer to all those different types of note-taking. The other hurdle, of course, is organizing all of this into a workable system once I’ve got the notes down (GTD one-alpha system? individual class files?). More ideas:
Thomas Edison’s notetaking system
Taking notes on big books on MeFi
February 9th, 2008 at 3:08 pm