As soon as you can after class, do what Elliot Aronson did. Having done poorly on his midterms, thanks to his lousy note taking, he came up with a new strategy: “At the end of every class, I would find a little nook — sometimes even the nearest stairwell — read over my scribbled notes, and neatly summarize them in a page or two. At the end of the semester, when it was time to prepare for the final, my notes described the heart of the course. More than that: They revealed the scope and pattern of the professor’s thinking and the way the lectures dovetailed with the readings. I had taken the first step toward mastering the art of getting to the essence of a topic… I found I was also learning to love to learn, and, perhaps most important, I was learning to think critically and challenge unsubstantiated assertions. For the first time in my life I understood what it was to be a student.”
That “aha!” experience can strike you, too. When you review your notes, zero in on the information from class. If your notes are dotted with doodles, arrows and asterisks, missing definitions and phrases that just don’t make sense, organize and rewrite them. Fill in the missing definitions or other information by consulting your textbook or your friends’ notes, or asking a teaching assistant or instructor. These activities are another way of testing yourself and filling the gaps in what you don’t know.
Leave a Reply