Chapter 7: Getting It Down review.... the low down on taking notes

It took me by surprise that there was actually that much variety in note taking. When I first heard what the chapter was about I pictured the few types of note taking that I had encountered. I pictured guided notes, notes that my teacher had already drafted that we had to copy, and just simply attempting to write everything the teacher said. That was it... three different note taking strategies, only one that I ever found even remotely successful. I attempted to do the "write down what is important" thing but I always had a really hard time with it. My way of thinking was that if the teacher was saying it, it must be important. So I would end up with a giant jumble of notes that were unorganized and hard to understand out of class. With that thought in mind I was happy to read that the author believed professors should organize their lectures in a way that made note taking more organized. It reminded me of a teacher I had during one of my previous years at USM. I would take the notes in the order she told them but later I would find that the notes skipped around a lot more than I had realized in class. This also led me to the conclusion that I was not able to pay attention to what I was hearing while writing the notes down. I thought I was paying attention but in the end I was paying more attention to the notes than the content. Then of course I read that taking good notes trains the student to not only pay attention but also what they are paying attention to. I knew before this chapter that I was a poor note taker, I just didn't know how poor. The fact that I made it all the way to my senior year of college without these skills both amazes and saddens me. I have to ask myself, was I taught to do this and simply did not catch on to it? If that is the case, how will I be certain my students catch on to it? I am going to hope that I was not taught it because in some ways that doesn't shake my belief in education as much as the other option does.