You will need a notebook for this course, and I expect you to use it.
(In fact, I strongly suggest that you have a reasonably sturdy, medium-size notebook for each course you take in your university career.)
There is no one way to take notes, and after a while you will find what works for you. This may also vary in different contexts. For instance, I’m quite a fan of what are sometimes called spider notes, mind maps, or “concept mapping,” especially when I am preparing for class, or for an essay or a talk. When I take notes a book, however, they look far like an index. And I usually take very extensive and quite linear notes when I am listening to a lecture, because this is what helps me listen best.
But it is clear when you should be taking notes. To get the most out of this course (and others!), you will be taking notes in the following situations:
- As you read the texts. Your notes need not be too extensive, but at the minimum make a personal index for yourself of key scenes, events, themes, and terms: note them down, but also record the page numbers where they turn up, so you can return to them later. Sometimes it helps to jot down plot points, character names, and so on. This helps both to avoid confusion, and also in preparation for the weekly quiz. Don’t try to record everything: one of the advantages of taking notes is that it forces you to reflect on what is truly important and significant in what you are reading. Your notes are also the place to jot down ideas or questions that you have as you are reading. This will make your blog posts much easier and quicker to write when you are done. If you have bought a physical copy of the book (highly recommended), then you may also want to underline key passages and/or make brief notes in the margins or at the back of the book. But still your notebook will be your learning hub for the course, and enable you to make connections between the texts you are reading.
- As you watch lecture videos and conversation videos, note down the key concepts and themes. At the most basic level, record the subheadings and video chapter titles: for the Proust lectures, for instance, these would be “Modernism and the Novel,” “Windows onto Reality,” and “Multiple Perspectives, Defamiliarization, and Difficulty”; for the Proust conversation video, these would be “Why Proust? Reinventing the Novel,”Time, Memory, and the Experience of Time,” and so on. These will be a reminder of what the lectures and conversations were about. This will help when it comes to the weekly quiz, but also helps you enter into a conversation about the texts, and prepares you for further discussion in class.
- As you read other people’s blog posts and as you take part in class discussion. Again, class notes need not be very extensive: you don’t need to write down everything that is said. (Sometimes, taking too many notes is as unhelpful as taking too few notes.) But write down key observations and debates: especially as you observe the different ways in which your fellow students have read a text, you come to see that there is more than one way to interpret what we are reading.
- As you listen to your instructor. Instructors often have things that are worth listening to, and tracking a train of thought by writing it down helps you focus and follow it. It makes you a better listener.
- Whenever a thought comes to you. Overall, the best students are very often those who can see connections and resonances within a course, and also between their different courses, as they come across problems, concepts, and approaches that transfer across different domains. What the best students learn in one course reinforces what they learn in others. And when you are in the zone, stray thoughts may come to you when you are on the bus, surfing the web, or thinking about something completely different. When these ideas arise, write them down. (This then frees up the brain to move on to other things.)
An example of a fairly minimal “personal index” of a book
An example of spider notes or “mind-mapping”
Remember that you are not writing notes for anyone else. They do not have to be pretty or particularly neat. But they have to be useful to you, both at the time that you take them (as they help you focus and think) and in the future (as they provide a record to which you can return).
If you write a page or so of notes in each of these situations (depending of course on the size of your notebook: I recommend that yours is not too small to be useful, and not too large to be portable), then you will expect to have 5–10 pages of notes for each week of the course. This should be enough to fill up a notebook over the semester. Don’t be afraid to leave gaps and white spaces, which both make your notes more readable and allow you to add more as you go over them when you prepare for class (or for an exam). Then at the end of the semester, with that notebook, plus the blog posts you have written, you will have almost all your thoughts and much of your learning from the course in easy reach. Next semester, buy new notebooks for the new courses you are taking!
You may think that either highlighting the text (whether it is digital or physical) or typing notes on your computer or phone is equally efficient. But science has repeatedly shown that writing by hand is better for memory and learning: “those writing by hand [have] higher levels of electrical activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory.” You are literally learning through the body. This is an excellent habit to acquire, a study skill, even a life skill, that will set you up for success throughout your university career and beyond.
Here, finally, are some more resources on note-taking:
- Taking Notes, from UBC’s Chapman Learning Commons
- The Cornell Note Taking System, from Cornell University
- Effective Note-Taking in Class, from the University of North Carolina
