Professors' Guide to Getting Good Grades in College Professors' Guide to Getting Good Grades in College Professors' Guide to Getting Good Grades in College Collins - An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers to be published June 27th, 2006 ABOUT THE BOOK MEET THE AUTHORS MEET THE AUTHORS BUY THE BOOK
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chapter 5

Top 10 Tips for Taking Excellent Lecture Notes

About 14 minutes into the lecture, it dawns on you. You probably ought to be taking notes. Maybe writing down a few words or phrases from time to time. To relieve the boredom if nothing else. And so that you'll have little reminders when the time comes to study your notes before the test. Surely you should be writing down at least the stuff the professor puts on the board and maybe a couple of words on the handout, too. Most of the time, though, you can sit back and watch the passing show like the rest of your classmates. They're not writing, either, so you're safe.

Far be it from us to disturb this rare moment of tranquility in the hectic world of the 21st century. But if you want to have excellent notes -- notes that will actually give you something to study from (not to mention something to keep you awake for the painful 50 minutes of the lecture) -- you're going to have to sit up and get busy. Busy writing, that is. If you want to do really well in your courses, you absolutely, positively, without a doubt need to have good notes. Our top 10 tips show you how...

TIP # 1: Create a Document You Can Use Later

In many college courses, especially intro courses, the lecture content is a major subject of study. The professor distills the content into 40 or so well-crafted lectures, paying special attention to selecting those (and only those) points that are most important for you to know. Readings? Mere background. Discussion (or quiz or drill) sections? Most just go over the lecture or, if they have additional content, it too is distilled, this time by the TA. These professors and TAs are great! They do all the processing for you.

But then the lectures take on a life of their own. The lectures become Lectures. Unlike your high school teacher, who was content simply to sum up the reading and ask you a couple of questions to make sure you had done it, your college professor thinks he or she knows more than the guy who wrote the textbook. And that part of his or her job is to present his or her own take on the material only touched on in the textbook. Unless of course the professor has written the textbook, in which case he or she takes special pains to have the lectures go beyond the textbook (for otherwise why should you bother coming to the lecture at all, when you can get the same information at home?)

And if that weren't enough, once the professor has focused the learning experience on the Lectures, he or she feels free to take exam questions or paper topics straight out of these much-prized Lectures. Imagine that. The professor actually wants a return on his or her investment in these precious Lectures. So how are you going to study all the stuff your professor has been spouting out hour after hour? Need we answer? ...

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