Taking Effective Notes

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What you do after the lecture is just as important as what you do during the lecture.

• Fill in the gaps by asking classmates, the teacher, or the TA what you need clarified.
• Consider swapping notes with classmates to see what they wrote down.
• Check spelling of crucial names/terms or other important information.
• Don't recopy your notes (a waste of time because your brain goes on automatic pilot).
• Instead of recopying your notes, review them within 24 hours. (Short-term memory deteriorates quickly, and you lose 50%-80% of the material if you don't review.)
• Annotate your notes. (Mark what's important, add page numbers from textbook, etc.)
• Fill out the "Recall" column if you're using the Cornell system.
• Employ some critical thinking techniques to help the new information stick--summarize, synthesize with info from previous lectures/textbook/your life, find relationships, decide whether you agree/disagree, devise sample test questions based on the lecture, predict what the next lecture/reading will cover, etc.