Take Good Notes… or don’t

It’s back to school for just about everyone (including me), and the one key skill everyone will have to develop no matter your interest is good note taking. I went to a Catholic school where we were taught a very rigid form of note taking, but it works well and I actually still use pretty much the same way of note taking in law school.

But we always need reminders on what works, what doesn’t, and what good notes are and what good notes aren’t. That’s why I found “Advice For Students: Taking Notes That Work,” to be a particularly good article. Of course, I do say every article is good, but that’s only because if it wasn’t good, then I wouldn’t be writing about it! So this is yet another great article for you to check out. Excerpt and link after the jump.

Note-taking is one of those skills that rarely gets taught. Teachers and professors assume either that taking good notes comes naturally or that someone else must have already taught students how to take notes. Then we sit around and complain that our students don’t know how to take notes.

I figure it’s about time to do something about that. Whether you’re a high school junior or a college senior or a grad student or a mid-level professional or the Attorney General of the United States, the ability to take effective, meaningful notes is a crucial skill. Not only do good notes help us recall facts and ideas we may have forgotten, the act of writing things down helps many of us to remember them better in the first place.

Read The Whole Thing!