do i care about the class? if so, take a shitton of notes, record audio file of lecture

if i dont care?
doodles n shit

Pencil
Binder
Graph paper
Note anything of interest with headlines
Summary of lecture in one paragraph when class ends
When studying for exam, rewrite all my notes. Ace exams.

Now fuck off.

I don't take any notes. It's impossible for me to. So I bought a voice recorder, and I just listen back to the tapes if needed.

in school we had textbooks so i never took notes because it was utterly futile; instead i just sat and tried to understand, and ask questions if i didn't. i got in trouble for this and my teachers often called me lazy.

the annoying thing is that despite always getting top marks and beating everybody via this method, many of my teachers still said i was lazy and stupid afterwards, and the dumbasses who wrote down whatever the teacher said and wrote verbatim and got poor marks were still the smart, diligent workers.

the teachers most susceptible to this were, unsurprisingly, biologists.

now i'm at uni and it's important to take notes, as obviously there are no textbooks tailor made for your course.

pen and lined paper pad is all good. doing maths.

Shittons of looseleaf and a nice pen

>Or maybe you're just badass enough that you DON'T ANY NOTES WHATSOEVER.
This. Fuck notes.

>>3639314
enjoy your shit-tier education whilst it lasts.

I guess I'm badass. I only do notes in my hippocampus and cortex.

>>3639329
>I cannot study without taking notes
>Hence, everyone who can must be following an inferior education
Makes perfect sense, bro.

i only take notes for particularly interesting items. 4 years fit into one black n red notebook.

>>3639384
of course your education is inferior if you are able to memorise everything you need having only heard it once. i very much doubt you are actually in higher education, and if you are it is definitely at a shit tier institution.

>>3639385
What major?

>>3639406
>I confirm that being able to memorize things efficiently implies that you're doing an inferior education
Sorry bro, you're making less and less sense the longer we talk.

if the lecturer has good online notes (or even handouts if they understand students) then i write nothing or whatever isn't covered or clear. if the notes are shit or non-existent i write notes and proceed to mash up then lose them and then borrow my flatmates notes.

>>3639446
> he thinks memorising efficiently will let you memorise an entire university course having listened to the material once.

bro unless you're some kind of autistic savant you clearly have zero experience of genuine higher education and the longer you continue the dumber you sound to anybody with a clue.

i'm going to take your ignoring of the question of what your course is as a confirmation that it is shit tier. thanks for the chat.

you guys know about libraries, right?

I'm assuming 99% of sci is undergrad or high school, in which case every word you will hear throughout your degree has already been put to paper and published in every language there is, and in english, german or japanese probably a hundred times over.
furthermore the people who wrote these books probably summarised the information far better than either you or your lecturer, by taking notes you are resigning to an inferior education.

I take notes for the sole purpose of reinforcing my understanding at the time of instruction. I don't use them for reference. Instead I use my textbooks.

Also, I only use one side of a page of paper.

>>3639473
> he thinks memorising efficiently will let you memorise an entire university course having listened to the material once.
Of course not, there's still the book and/or slides to study from.

And I'm working on a master's in computer science and engineering, if you must know.

>>3639493
> I don't take notes. You can successfully learn degree material by memorising efficiently.
> Lecturer provides slides.

Confirmed for lowering sci's already dismal average IQ by 50 points.

>>3639512
>You can successfully learn degree material by memorising efficiently.
If you read carefully, you'll find I never said that.
>Lecturer provides slides.
Of course he does. If he wouldn't, THAT would be a surefire indication of a "shit-tier education".

The things that I know I know, I don't write down. Things that I hear that I haven't heard before? Written down for study later.

Even if it's something I haven't heard before, I don't write it down right away. I listen until I get it or my professor stops explaining it. THEN it's written down in my own words / method.

>>3639529
All of my professors use a whiteboard. I would feel shortchanged if they used slides instead.

>>3639477
that's all well and god but there is no ultimate text book they all have good points and bad and they are only ever helpful for one or two years of undergrad. after that its much harder find specific information which follows the course. and anyone who has written a paper knows its easier to talk, interact and draw diagrams than it is to put it on a page.
and many research university offer courses in the leading edge of their research its often far too specific.

I dont' take notes but I study by writing my own notes from slides and coursebook.

>>3639552
>don't have to deal with shitty handwriting
>don't have to deal with bad diagrams
>don't have to deal with pens running faint
>get through a lot more material
>can view exact same information in same presentation later

shortchanged indeed

As usual. Black fountain pen, quad paper.

>>3639552
Proofs are done on the blackboard of course, but I find introducing and explaining concepts is best done using well-prepared slides (or similar teaching aid).

>>3639570
Maybe it's fine for non-empirical sciences, but for Physics, interactive presentation of material is preferable to static.

>Also, I only use one side of a page of paper.

YOU'RE SCUM.

>>3639598
It's a habit I picked up from an undergraduate
Electromagnetism professor. It's much easier to find the information you're looking for if you only have to flip pages in one direction.

My notes and what I use to take them. Zebra and Sharpie FTW.

>>3639606
>mfw when no pic

>>3639579
I study physics and astronomy.

i stand by my statements, derivations should be clarified on the board if necessary but otherwise slides are far superior.

>>3639603
I should probably start doing that to be honest, my first year notes are an absolute disaster and it's impossible to find anything in them

>>3639556

>that's all well and god but there is no ultimate text book they all have good points and bad and they are only ever helpful for one or two years of undergrad

>many research university offer courses in the leading edge of their research its often far too specific

which universities do this for undergrads?
I seriously want a name of one university that subjects undergrad students in any scientific or engineering degree to cutting edge research.

>>3639611
>Those scratched out mistakes

Fuck, I want to cry

>>3639579
>>3639473

Wow. This guy is an idiot. I'm a physics major and I don't take any notes. I can't believe you are actually suggesting you need to MEMORIZE a semester's worth of material. It is possible to learn and derive without massive memorization, ya know.

>>3639626 It is possible to learn and derive without massive memorization, ya know
I wonder how many years you have not to study in order to come up with such a statement. "Oh what was the LSZ formula again, I'll just derive it quickly."

>>3639622
I know, right? I transfer them to Paint later on.

>>3639618
I certainly got *introduced* to certain topics of cutting edge research (read: certain pieces that were digestible by undergrads that the given professor was working on), though of course not to the point of real deep knowledge as required to significantly contribute. Eindhoven University of Technology.

I also was directly involved with some cutting-edge research as an undergrad, but that was a research assistant job and not part of the curriculum, and only applicable to those students that the involved professor thought unusually capable.

>>3639626
Yea, and what year physics are you in? First year shit is goddamn easy, but once you start getting into Maxwell's equations and QM, it's much easier to lose track of things.

As far as note-taking goes, I use hardcover notebooks and a pencil. A pencil b.c I make tons of mistakes / "typos" so I need to correct them, and hardcover notebooks b.c they're the only ones that survive the abuse I dish out to them (spiral bound notebooks just disintegrate by the end of the semester).

>>3639618
the university of glasgow for one we get technical courses in gravitational wave detection, its too specific and too modern for a text book. there are also courses on modern optics too that are too specific.
im not saying its a full and comprehensive course on gravitational waves but there are no prescribed or even suggested books for the course. and yes i asked.
i've seen it in other institutions as well.

>>3639611

This is what kills me about note takers. Look at all that superfluous crap about water and carbon in your notes. Did you really need to explicitly say that H2O has 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom? And all of the properties of water/carbon that you listed are just an amalgamation of useless trivia. You should seek to actually understand why those things are, rather than just memorizing useless facts. If you do that, then you won't need the notes.

>>3639633
All the time bro, all the time. (Never heard of LSZ though.)

>>3639649
>This is what kills me about note takers. Look at all that superfluous crap about water and carbon in your notes. Did you really need to explicitly say that H2O has 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom? And all of the properties of water/carbon that you listed are just an amalgamation of useless trivia.

Writing it down forces me to think about it, helping me write it down later on. I don't plan on actually looking through this later on, but if I do, it's nice to have that info there.

>You should seek to actually understand why those things are, rather than just memorizing useless facts. If you do that, then you won't need the notes.

I already "know" why. When I'm in class, I just write the stuff down. I sort everything out later.

Trust me, I'm not the guy that writes everything down then spends the night memorizing the information.

>>3639646

>Implying Maxwell's equations aren't first year

I'm in my Junior year taking Plasma Physics and Mathematical Methods for Classic Mechanics 2 as well as a Markov Chains class for my math minor and Computer Systems for my CS minor.

Though tbh nobody should be impressed by nor should they make fun of other people for the level of classes they are taking. First year classes and third year classes are equivalently difficult. The same caliber of students take Gen Phys 1 as take QM 2.

Just key points, illustrations if necessary, summaries of the material, and how the lecture material compares to the text. I'm not a copious note-taker, but it works. Also, no laptops. They lose their worth outside of GE and 100 level stuff.

>>3639673
>helping me write it down later on.

remember it later on*

>>3639673
Yup, same here. Taking notes forces me to concentrate on the material, think about what's going on in the class, and helps me remember the material (as well as keeping me awake during class :P ). I tend to copy down everything the prof writes on the chalkboard, but I don't really read much of it afterwards. At most, I skim over them for the important points. I almost never use my textbooks because I end up learning more or less everything at the lectures.

I write furiously but only to make myself think like >>3639673 mentioned. Though, I never read them after putting it down on paper, I think I wouldn't even be able to do it properly, because my notes are an absolute mess with things written randomly in all directions, shapes and sizes

It's a good idea to take notes by hand, and then type them up at the end of the week. It makes them cleaner, easier to access, and reinforces what you went over.

Do you guys highlight your books? This always seems pointless to me, but I see it all the time at every level.

My overall strategy is just:
1) Go to all the lectures, copy down everything written on the chalkboard (helps me remember, and also forces me to think through everything being written on the board)
2) Do all the assigned homework.
3) Skim over notes (maybe an hour or two, max?) and do a bunch of practice questions before each exam.

This works pretty well for me (engineering physics major) :P

>>3639720
Should it ever be necessary to reread a chapter, I'd like to only read the important paragraphs.

>>3639723
I agree with all of this post except the
>:P
part.

My notes consist of one or two point form points per lecture. All the gritty stuff you can just get from a textbook, so there is no point in noting down errything.

>>3639720
usually when I read a textbook I summarize a whole paragraph/section into one or 2 lines.

>>3639733
This is what a REAL textbook looks like. Landau and Lifshitz ftw!

>>3639851

>>3639733 here
Agreed. That book is for an intro biology course. Gen ed FTL :(

>>3639851
Hey .. Lagrangian dynamics.
You should read Fundamentals of Applied dynamics by James Williams.
Best textbook I ever read.

>>3639851
this

If your textbook looks like a coloring book and uses paragraphs to say what could be clearly said in a few sentences, then you're reading the wrong textbook.

Compared to the older textbooks that I've seen, almost all modern textbooks feel childish. I suspect that it's due to the way that textbook authors are paid. More pages + more figures = more money.

>>3639873
I've noticed that as we get into the upper years of uni, we tend to use older textbooks. We used a 40 year old textbook for classical mechanics (Landau and Lifshitz), 25 year old textbook for PDEs, 20 year old textbook for complex analysis, 20 year textbook for E+M, and a 15 year old book for semiconductor physics.

I take notes to stay awake in class. The fact that it helps me avoid having to study much later is just a bonus.

>>3640005
LOL, same here. I have trouble staying awake in lectures the second I stop taking notes...