Note Taking

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• 2 Likes

  DumbHollywoodActor Alum Inactive ⭐

  February 2016 7468 karma

  I’d ask our resident note-taking guru @bbutler . His notes are wicked good.
• stepharizona Alum Member

  February 2016 3197 karma

  I would go with whatever helps you remember more. I have written notebooks that I organize everything in, as for me, that act of writing helps me comprehend and remember it more (especially when it's in a blue pen, weird I know) Im slowly starting to type them all out as well, to help bring everything together from the different sources I've read and tips I've seen.
• MrSamIam Inactive ⭐

  February 2016 2086 karma

  I can type much faster than I can write by hand. However, many of my notes consist of conditional logic. I'm a tad obsessive-compulsive, so finding the proper symbols on Word would be a pain in the butt. That's why I stick to taking notes by hand.
• 1 Like

  bbutler Inactive ⭐

  February 2016 401 karma

  @DumbHollywoodActor thanks but the credit needs to go to you and the other people who host the webinars, I'm just trying to record the nuggets everyone is dropping. Just so everyone can kind of understand my approach here it is.
  
  As for the question regarding pencil and paper vs. computer I take notes on the computer for a couple of reasons. First, I can type a lot faster than then I can write not to mention it's a lot more legible. Second, it's a lot easier to format and make changes on my laptop as opposed to erasing or crossing out whenever I make mistakes. I'm still trying to be able to figure out exactly how to make all my notes visually more pleasing when I transfer them to 7sage but it's a work in process. With that being said I definitely don't oppose you or anyone else from taking notes by hand if that's what you're more comfortable with. I know that some people prefer to write it down by hand and they learn better like that so if that works for you then definitely do it. A bunch of the people that have given the webinars have stated that "you need to make all of this your own", meaning that some things that others (even the people that have scored 170+) have done won't work for you, be it annotation systems for RC, certain processes for LR, or even note-taking. My recommendation would be to try both and see what works better for you.
  
  As for my approach to taking notes, I want to be able to teach the material to someone at the end of a lesson, my premise being if I can teach the material to someone then I truly understand the material. For questions in the curriculum I want to try and do what JY does just do it in different words. I.e. Go through the context of the argument, break down the premises and conclusion, show the indicator words, identify the question type, go through the answer choices, show as many of the trap answer choices as I can and give reasons why certain things are. Although this is very time consuming and can seem redundant, it really cements me learning the material and truly turns it into a mechanical process. Keep in mind that I'm still very early in my prep but it really seems to be working well for me. The webinars are a little different because we have the option to watch them when they can be put up on youtube so you have the luxury of pausing and rewinding which is very helpful. Normally for those I'll do like a mad dash of the information while I'm watching or tuning in live and then when the webinar is finished I'll go back and take a few minutes to re-organize my notes so that they make sense. This forces me to go through the material again albeit an abridged version but again it helps with me retaining it. Also I think that another thing is people want to take pride in their work and posting notes or an analysis to questions that I do holds me accountable, people don't want to post something that they worked half-hazardly on especially when they have their name attached to it. So I think that plays a lot into it too and I highly recommend posting on the pages so that way it holds you accountable.
  
  Now for my process specifically, for questions I'll generally watch the first question and I won't do it myself because I don't want to cement any bad habits, I trust JY and his resume speaks for himself so I figure if I can have a personalized approach based on his methods I'll do okay. So I'll watch the question and I'll do notes for that. For the future ones I'll answer the question, I'll write down my notes, then I'll watch the explanation, and use the explanation as a check for my thought processes and I'll see how close my thought process is to JY's.
  
  I hope this helps and if anyone has any other questions feel free to ask!
• 1 Like

  Gladiator_2017 Yearly Member

  February 2016 1332 karma

  I've been struggling with tracking my notes (as someone who has been studying on and off for a while). I'm currently taking a PT a week and I think I've finally found what works best for me.
  
  During my Blind Review I'll have three tabs open: 1) google doc for blind reviewing all the questions I circled going through why 4 of the answers are wrong and why the correct one is right. In this process I'll also note why I think the question took me longer than it should have or why I fell for the trap answer choice. I'll highlight any concepts that I want to come back to.
  2) a different google doc - for me to type up questions that I want to redo as a possible section of the questions I struggled the most with (chosen from my blind review set).
  3) google slides/powerpoint - this is where I'll make a slide for each concept that I want to review. For example, I struggled with a question that started off with Not all... not realizing that I should have diagrammed it and that not all = some...not. For my google slide I have in large letter Not All = Some ..Not and then at the bottom I have the question stem written out and note for which PT it's from.
  
  I decided google docs/slides works best for me, since I review/edit the documents (on the offline setting) while I'm on the train or just have a few minutes to spare when I'm out and about.
  
  It takes forever to go through this process, but I figure I'll stick with it until I feel like it's over kill.
  
  
• bbutler Inactive ⭐

  February 2016 401 karma

  @Gladiator_2015 I plan on having similar data for when I start taking PT's. Day 1 will be a PT and afterwards I'll log some data into an excel spreadsheet to track my progress. (Date, Time I took the exam, how I felt, what I ate or whatnot to try and begin to develop a pattern). Day 2 I'll BR the test, score it and I'll fill out more of the excel spreadsheet (scores for each section, total score, log each question type, game type, passage type etc. Then on day 3 I'll go through and watch the video explanations and for all of the questions that I circled or got wrong, I'll type up my own explanations for (what trap I fell for, what was the question type that I got wrong, what was my mode of thinking when I was answering the question, etc. I figure this way I'll be able to have some quantitative data that I can track my progress and better assess where my specific weak areas are moving forward and see where I can make improvements. I will agree that this process will be extremely tedious at first and time-consuming but totally worth it when the results start to show.
  
  However, I never thought about tracking time for questions to see questions that I should skip I'll have to keep that in mind and add it to the list of things I'll track. Also creating my own LSAT section made up of questions is also something I'll have to look into, great idea!
  
• Gladiator_2017 Yearly Member

  February 2016 1332 karma

  I got the idea of tracking the time for each question from the Timing Strategies webinar (which was incredibly helpful and full of practical advice). I decided on typing up the questions (instead of just cutting it out) so that I can reinforce argument structures as I type it out but also to use Pacifico's suggestion of making a 5th section.