<p>I was reading some of Cal Newport’s work, and he said when you are doing a reading assignment you should only need about one page of types notes. I do use the Q/E/C method for notes, but one page for a 25 page reading assignment seems small, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>zero.</p>
<p>you highlight the relevant passages and make notes in the margins. this isn’t high school anymore.</p>
<p>Most of the time I don’t take notes or highlight or do anything. Sometimes I don’t even read what I’m supposed to read. I only take notes when something is difficult to remember or if I want to have something to review after several weeks, and the length of the notes really depends on what I want to remember (right now I’m doing about half a page of type notes for about 25-30 pages for one of my classes).</p>
<p>Personally, I rarely take any notes from my reading. If I feel that I need to review the material from the reading before a test, I’ll just skim back over the chapters, and draw the main ideas out. They’re usually fairly easy to locate if it’s a well designed text book. A lot of humanities style classes like art history or philosophy can use books that are more of a “reader” than an outright text book, and in some of these instances it can be helpful to take a few notes down. Even with those types of books though, I would MAYBE take a page of notes for 20-30 pages of reading. Generally speaking, if you need to take more notes than that, you’re probably not really isolating the main ideas.</p>
<p>I’m the type that doesn’t like hi-lighting in books, but I imagine it would be very helpful and would save a lot of time that would be spent writing notes. Personally, I don’t have time to take notes down from my reading.</p>
<p>It REALLY depends on your major; mine is philosophy.
I underline the book like crazy/make some notes and then go through a longer revisionary process when I write an essay (for example, underline first, pick out relevant quotes, pick out transitions/key points related to prompt, write first draft – this takes the full time allotted which is around a week or two).
That being said if you can get through Husserl without taking any notes and still writing a great essay, you are a God. 
But really…consistent note-taking is overrated in my opinion. I don’t have 3 hours/credit hour to spend on each class in the school year, and I used to not be too social in high school (e.g. this was a distinct possibility for me). But then I got a boyfriend, and involved in 3 or 4 things (depending on if you think a local fashion show is a “thing”). Life happens, man. :)</p>
<p>Thanks everyone, I’m a freshman and I’m still trying to get the hang of everything. In HS we had to take notes pretty much everyday, so I’m just trying to figure out more efficient ways to take care of things.</p>
<p>I only take notes on a chapter if I’m making some sort of outline right before the midterm. I take notes while I’m in class though which are infinitely more useful than the ones I take myself from reading. </p>
<p>When I do an essay I print out any articles or whatever I need, go through them and highlight/write notes down, and then just start writing the essay and referring back to them when I need a quote or do some type of analysis. </p>
<p>You know, though. It is better to look for an outline first and read that. My political science textbook averages 30-40 pages per chapter. For my first midterm, I read all of the chapters in their entirety. The second midterm I just read the outlines. Both times I paid attention and took notes in class. Similar results. You don’t need to read every single detail to get a good grasp on the knowledge in those types of classes. You do need to know specific examples but not everything.</p>
<p>Now if you’re taking notes for a math class…I write pretty much just about everything. The past three years of my education I’ve never referred to my notes, not even once. This year, I do! Sometimes teachers have something more useful to contribute than regurgitating from the book that can really help you out.</p>
<p>@Cal
For my economics class I’ve been taking notes like I do for my math class, but my geology class is the class where I think I’m taking too many notes. I was able to change some things this morning, and took out a whole page.</p>
<p>idk how do people feel about taking notes in class?</p>
<p>i find that when i take notes in class, i fail to grasp the concepts etc because i am more busy writing stuff down than actually listening. especially now that everything’s on the internet, i just don’t think it’s an efficient use of time/brainpower/paper.</p>
<p>i jot down calculations in my planner if i need to, and that’s about all the writing i do.</p>
<p>0?
Reading assignment? What is this?
If I need something from the book in order to do homework I will look it up. I guess it depends on your major…</p>
<p>I do tend to take more notes during lectures, but I try not to take too many. I try to just jot down the main points and fill in the blanks later. As another poster above mentioned, I’ve found that I don’t grasp the concepts of the lecture as well when I take too many notes, because I’m busy taking notes and not concentrating on everything that is being said during the lecture. I take no notes in many of my classes. My chemistry class this semester started with a ton of notes during the lectures, but after the first couple weeks I realized that I didn’t need to take notes at all really. Now I just jot down a few things that seem particularly important. In my math class I take down a ton of notes, but notes are a lot more important in math because you need to know certain steps to solve equations, take down examples to reference etc. I don’t think I’ve taken a single note this whole semester in my english comp II class. My humanities class has had a few notes. My Social Problems class has had quite a few notes though…but this class is almost entirely based on the material covered in the lectures. The book reading is important, because you need to know the various sociological theories and how they apply to different situations, but as far as the actual material on the tests, it is virtually all drawn from lecture material pertaining to certain situations and events.</p>
<p>It really depends on the class more than anything. Some classes do require a fair amount of note taking, but on the whole I find it to be somewhat detrimental to take too many notes, because I’m focusing more on what I’m writing, and less on the next part of the lecture. A lot of that will depend on an individuals learning style too though.</p>
<p>I’m only taking notes for econ (nothing major) and my geology class. My geology class is the only class that I’m trying to find efficient ways to study for, because we have to remember a fair amount of things for the exams. The exams are m/c heavy, but reading the material once doesn’t seem to do it for me.</p>