taking notes in class - is pen and paper possible??

[joiedevivre86]

Hi current dental students,

I know there are threads on note taking but most discuss tablets versus laptops. I'm a huge pen and paper person. I do not learn stuff when I type it - my mind totally wanders. And I really don't like to read a ton on the computer (if I can help it). I'm debating purchasing a tablet for note taking in DS but I've never used one for class so I'm skeptical of the transition. Does anyone take notes with pen and paper in DS? Or is this just crazy? I'm a big sketcher/diagrammer/colors person and I write pretty fast/neat... but I'm weary of burning out my hand too. I'm not so concerned about having multiple notebooks - the school I will be attending has huge lockers and I can easily switch them out at lunch.

Thanks for your input!

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[syap]

Print out the powerpoints and take notes on those. Like 3/6 slides per page.

 

[Bifenthrin]

I usually print out the powerpoints, four slide to a page, and take notes by hand when I go to lectures. It's definitely do-able.

 

[Gen. Beauregard]

I was pen and paper my entire academic career until dental school. Within the first week I realized all the cool kids had tablets and were going to town on the power points with notability, so I got one. Then all the cool kids started bringing MacBooks to class because they're easier to type on and make notes directly on PowerPoint with. Now, only one third to one half the class shows up to lecture because they're all recorded online, and my tablet doesn't leave my side, but it's not what I take notes on, it's what I use to write my own pen and paper notes from. It sits on the kitchen table next to my legal pad (legal ruled with the 1/3 margin and ghost margins because it's how gunners do) and I can crank out notes and lodge facts in my brain long enough to recite them. The rest of the time, if my tablet is out during lecture, it's because I'm watching monster trucks crush cars and stuff on YouTube . The problem being, of course, is that hell yeah I'd rather watch Grave Digger do a sick sky wheelie than learn about substrate binding and endocrine pathways and apocrine sweat glands. So now, the best days I have in lecture are when I sit there with nothing and just take it all in like I'm watching a TED talk, and then go home and feverishly write notes and cover my wall with whiteboard marker. Sometimes I'll pull the tablet out and make a star on the slide that they mention an exam question will be about, but I have to put it back in my backpack or it's all slap wheelies and cyclones from there. You will take the best notes outside of class the majority of the time. At this level of education it seems like they just read you the words on the screen behind them and hit the "next" button.

 

[Glimmer1991]

Almost every class at UNC goes far too fast for writing by hand. I type about 110 wpm, and there are some classes where I really can't even go fast enough to get down what the professors say.

 

[Kayaker89]

I know a few people who print notes, at this point in the year they have gone though $100s of ink and paper and now have a 1000 pound library of notes. It's a whole lot easier to get a iPad and use notability, you can write on it if you want, will never increase in weight, and you will never loose a note bc everything is backed up in the cloud

 

[Incis0r]

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[joiedevivre86]

I know a few people who print notes, at this point in the year they have gone though $100s of ink and paper and now have a 1000 pound library of notes. It's a whole lot easier to get a iPad and use notability, you can write on it if you want, will never increase in weight, and you will never loose a note bc everything is backed up in the cloud

Hmm, good point on the 1000 pound library of notes.

Thanks for the responses everyone!

 

[DentalDoge]

Im gonna throw in a suggestion for Surface Pro 3, or even the Surface 3 with OneNote.

If you really want to know how well it fares, message me in 2 months and I should have put the Surface Pro 3 through its paces.

 

[nirjar2212]

Current surface pro 3 user. I used it for first year of Dental school... Its amazing. Cheaper option is surface 3 which should work as well.

 

[Dentsss]

Would you say that you would prefer the surface pro 3 over a laptop? And why did you like surface pro 3 so muxh

 

[SableFire]

I have a Surface Pro 3 and most definitely prefer it over my laptop! I also have a wireless mouse and the type cover keyboard is great so it types and feels like a like a laptop. With OneNote the Surface Pro 3 is great for taking notes and can easily replace a notebook while still allowing you to write notes if that is your style. It is also great being able to upload powerpoints into OneNote and highlight and write directly on them.

 

[StrugglingDS]

It depends on the teaching style of your professor. In my school, almost nobody uses pen and paper to take notes during lecture. We generally utilize Microsoft OneNote, insert the powerpoints as printouts and then type notes. Some professors have everything we needed to know typed in their powerpoints, some have nothing but pictures but speaks at a moderate speed good enough to do an on-the-spot transcription as they lecture. Worst case scenario, some have nothing but pictures on their powerpoints but speak 70words per minute and it is just impossible to take notes during class. In this case, some of us record the lecture and either transcribe them ourselves later on or pay a professional transcriber.

 

[DentalDoge]

It's too bad most professors aren't really technology literate. It would be great for the them to share the notebook and do the lecture on OneNote, and it'll just update to everybody's notebook via cloud.