Do you take notes?

[ally1]

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Hi, for those who took the exam did you take notes (as you would in lecture) on your review book material? Or did you just annoteate and re-read? I am taking notes on things but have already written numerous numerous pages, don't know if that is too effiecient.

 

[Law2Doc]

Hi, for those who took the exam did you take notes (as you would in lecture) on your review book material? Or did you just annoteate and re-read? I am taking notes on things but have already written numerous numerous pages, don't know if that is too effiecient.

It's less about what is efficient and more about what gets stuff into your head. It has been shown (in numerous studies) that active learning trumps passive learning for most people. Whether it is hilighting or underlining or jotting margin notes and taking more comprehensive notes, you have a better chance of getting stuff into your brain if you are actually doing something along with the reading then just passively reading. What you do depends on what works best for you, and everyone is going to be different. I personally underlined and circled things and jotted margin notes. I've seen others who wrote more expansively. Others use different colors for different things, and so on. All are good. The one that works best for you and you alone trumps.

 

[crys20]

In class I have always, always written my own notes, its really the only thing that allows me to do well on tests I think. I take my own notes from each chapter of Robbins after I read the chapter once and use those to study, annotating them from class and highlighting, etc...Same with other texts, etc. I hadn't thought of re-writing my REVIEW books, but maybe I should! 🙂

 

[UCLAstudent]

I learn really well by writing things down. For Step 1, I liked to underline and write in the margins. My margin notes weren't anything new --- they only summarized what I had just read. Sometimes I would write down the same thing two or three times if I didn't feel particularly comfortable with the concept. Note that I only read through my review books once --- so the purpose of my margin notes wasn't for quick reference in the future. Rather, it was simply for the act of writing something down.

I also took notes on the answers for QBank and USMLE World. I highly recommend this --- but be warned that it's very tedious. Writing something down while reviewing those answers helped me to remember the information well. I never got around to reading those notes.