How I write, format, and organise my notes.
thank you all for all of your various asks on studying and how I organise my notes :)
First, I usually letter out the title and write out the learning objectives, which my proffessors write out with each lecture. I’m handling alimentary parasitology right now, and it is VAST, so it helps having clear points to focus on in the sea of information - that way I’m kind of staying focused and not getting overwhelmed (eyes on the prize, people!)
Then, I collate all the information I’m going to be learning from. For this particular module, I’ve got lecture slides, my notes (made on OneNote) that I’ve written during lecture, and our prof made us a massive parasitology study guide with notes and cross-strand links (extra notes on pathogenesis and post mortems etc.). So at this point I’ve got a few windows open, lol.
This next step is super duper important, you gotta make yourself a fancy coffee. Might I suggest the viral dalgona coffe above? Before that was a thing I added some vanilla to my coffee. None of the other steps are going to work without the coffee, can’t stress this enough. (jk, don’t use this as inspiration to overly caffeinate. chammomile tea works just fine)
Now, sit down in a nice space with maybe some tunes if that’s your thing (am currently listening to a lot of Lana Del Rey, her entire unreleased catalog is amazing), or sometimes if I’m having a hard time focusing I love putting on ASMR background noise. Here’s a link to my favorite, it’s a hufflepuff theme one! Make sure your study space is a nice one. I’ve put a few examples of the study spaces I’ve had in the past above, but of course now maybe avoid coffee stores (thanks, COVID!) when this is all over though, enlist a friend and study with them at a cafe for a little switcheroo!
It’s time. To go through all the slides with your learning objectives in mind and get straight down to it. Feel like you’re gonna be a bit distracted by ye old phone? I suggest using Forest! It’s what I use, I’m using it as I make these notes and only have access to my camera app thanks to it.
Now is a good time to mention that I don’t make my first notes on a topic very succinct and focus more on understanding everything, these are quite detailed and are the first thing I refer to during revision when I have any questions or need a refresher. I’ll make a separate post on revision notes later, where I talk about flashcards etc. So these notes are just focused on getting it all on there.
The first thing a lot of people mention is my notes just seem packed. as you see in the photo above, you’ve got loads of arrows going off sentences. Some in pencil, some in colours... I do this to make sort of ‘branches’ of each main point/sentence. I find this to be a nice way to flow my thoughts and make it still sort of summary-like. Some people find this cluttered, I find it really visually stimulating.
Next: I get questions about my diagrams. The first thing about my drawings (examples in photos above) is that I only make them if I find them neccessary way to present the concepts in a way that both summarises them and makes them easier to understandl
As for figures, I insert them as necessary. This goes for tables and graphs (above) and I just use them to display trends in data (for example, what months certain parasites peak at). They can be time consuming to make so I try to be pretty practical about what graphs I include. Again, if they don’t add to my notes/help me understand stuff better or summarise concepts in a useful way!
I also LOVE using colours. I don’t colour code during all my notes, however. I only do it where it makes sense/is useful. For example, above on the lecture i revised recently regarding antibiotics, I’ve put drug names in one colour, their class in another colour, and any enzyme names in a different colour, making the facts easier for me to quickly refer back to :)
I’ll also practise on little revision summary boxes for when I’m reading back over my notes closer to exams- this is something I’ve been doing over the years where I leave a little space and write down key facts to remember in pencil. Closer to the exam I’ll erase them and try to rewrite them from memory to test myself! An example of what that looks like is above.
And finally, as you can see, above, sometimes at the end of my lecture notes I will do a little aside. This, by far, especiaIlly in college, is probably the thing I tell people who ask that surprises them the most: I literally almost never do further reading. This instance is one good example of when I deviate from that with an *ever so tiny* bit of further reading. I have an itnerest in goats and this makes me happy!! Since sheep and goats are both small ruminants and I’d just spent about forty minutes learning about sheep, I figured an extra fifteen minutes learning about the subtle differences in goats would be worth my time. I do this when birds come up, too :)
That’s all for this post! As always, send in your asks and I’ll happily turn them into posts if they’re long enough. Shout out to the anon who inspired this post and I’m always happy to answer any questions you guys have for me <3 as always, stay safe and stay lovely everyone :)
