 Notes are the most visible aspect of your studying, and analyzing and looking at how you're taking notes and making changes to your note-taking style can improve your learning. Let me give you some examples of different note-taking patterns that have worked for students. When reading, many students find that it's too time-consuming to actually copy out all of the details of what's in their text. A faster and more active way to do this would be to underline or highlight the text. A good way to do this is to first read the paragraph. And then from the sentences and words that are within that paragraph, highlight or underline the words to make a new sentence that summarizes that paragraph. Let me show you an example of this. Notice that I can read the underlined words in order and they make a complete thought or idea. This is better than merely highlighting important looking words and phrases. So often students look over the highlighted text and find that it doesn't mean anything to them. And they actually have to go back and read the paragraph again to understand what was so important about those words. Making complete sentences works on two levels. It forces you to engage directly with material because you have to think about it before you can make those new sentences. And it makes later review easier because you have a complete thought identified. Of course, this is going to take more time than simply highlighting important looking words. However, the quality of your learning and the quality of the note that you've produced is so vastly superior to the other method that it's probably worth your time. Another method is to mark right directly into the margins of your textbook. What you might do is write summaries or diagrams or other information directly into the margin. If you don't have any margins in your text, you can put that information onto a post-it note and just stick it right onto the page. Of course, don't just re-copy the text to the margin. Actually organize that material in some fashion when you do this. You can also mark up the text with numbers or numerals or draw linking diagrams or arrows between different sections within that page. Some students focus better by actually writing out complete sentences. If you're a student that likes this, great, keep doing that. But again, make sure that you're not just copying out the material from the text into your notepad, organize it in some fashion. For problem solving courses like accounting and calculus, it's often helpful to make a summary note of each of the basic problem types in the course. You can include the details such as what formulas to use, what the procedures are, and give a detailed example. For courses where rote memorization is required, many students have found that flashcards are very helpful. Simply put a trigger word, key word, or a question on one side of the card and the information that you need to remember on the other and test yourself regularly and as often as you can in small memorization sessions. When it comes to taking quality lecture notes, the amount of pre-lecture work that you've done greatly enhances the quality of the note. If you haven't done any reading prior to the lecture, and then all the material is new to you, you're basically going to have to copy down word for word what the professor says. After the lecture's over, you're going to have to go back over that material and mark it up as if it were a textbook. A better way would be to first read the chapter before the lecture and take enough notes to get the basic idea of what is in that chapter, the key or critical concepts. After the lecture's over, you might want to compare and make sure that you've captured everything from the text and from the lecture. Many students have found that the real learning happens after the lecture's over and they're at home comparing and contrasting the textbook to the lecture note. Finally, you might want to put all of this together in one place and make sure that you don't have any knowledge gaps.