I was reading the other day where a PA student talking about taking notes, and the best way to go about it. This guy was worried about…
Evernote
OneNote
Google Docs
PowerPoint
And on and on.
He had one major concern: price
Price? For real. Evernote for a year is $70?If it works for you and helps you pass a course that is costing you let’s call it $1,000 a credit, and let’s say your first semester is 15 credits… I’m not the best at math, but that puts us at an even $15K.Is the $70 the problem? Especially if it works?
Next.
When thinking about taking notes, think about how you will keep up in class and how you will use them later. Will you go back after the class and organize them? Will you ignore them until the night before your exam? Will you ignore them forever?
Keeping up in class is tough. The lectures fly by. If your system is too bulky, you won’t be able to keep up.
I used to take copious notes on printed out lectures, but they were totally illegible.
There are three stages to taking notes that are more important than what way or how you take your notes: before, during, and after lecture activities.
– 1) Before the lecture breeze over what you’re going to be learning about. Get some of the info in your head, so that it at least sounds vaguely familiar during the lecture.
– 2) Highlight the stuff you think is important and that you should come back to. You should be listening to the lecture, not focusing on rewriting a textbook. Get the most important stuff.
-3) Review the lecture and organize your notes in a way that will make it so that you can study from them later when you come back to them. Doing this will help solidify some of the material now and make it easy when you come back to it. Especially if you’re like me and you can’t read your own handwriting.
If you’re looking for a set of presorted notes, organized for studying for medicine, EORS, or the PANCE, take a look at The Final Step.
Brian Wallace
