Note Taking

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Does anyone else really struggle with taking notes? I read something, I understand what I read, I remember what I read. That's all fine. If I don't understand then I wont remember, so I reread untill I do. But when I am forced to take notes, I struggle picking out important bits. To me, unless I have the whole sentence it doesn't make sense. So when I come to reread my notes and I have no idea what they are about. Also if I am taking notes on something, whether it be a book, a person speaking or a film, I find I don't take in a word of it, because I am constantly interupting my thoughts with writing notes down. Whereas if I can just listen/read/watch the thing without interuptions, generally I will remember it. Yet teachers will insist on note taking! (This rant follows a lecture from a tutor about how I "must take notes!" )

I don't do well taking notes, it always drove me mental that I was expected to take notes or that if I wasn't that it meant I wasn't interested in learning...no one seemed to grasp that I was taking-in what was being said and learning it, thus didn't need to take notes. I remember clearly being told to take notes or being told that if I didn't take notes I'd struggle to remember things from class, even now in situations when notes may need to be taken I have tutors/trainers asking 'Jadea, are you okay with this?' as if they assume I'm not if I'm not taking notes.

Do your teachers know you're AS/ASD?
Perhaps if yours do know you should try to explain this to them - teachers are like this, they always seem to assume we're struggling, when in fact more often than not many of us on the spectrum are actually able to take-in information much better than our NT classmates. It's like not showing your working out, not making eye contact in class, thinking one step ahead, needing practical application to understand certain things - it's just how we are and how we learn. It's their job as teachers to understand that you learn differently and adapt themselves to those needs, it's not their job to tell you how you have to learn...if you learn better without taking notes they need to accept that, full stop.

[quote="Bloodheart"] teachers are like this, they always seem to assume we're struggling, ]

I defininately agree with this. Constantly being told "you must ask for help when you need it" Yes teacher, the key point being "when". If and when I need help I will ask. lol. But no, the tutor doesn't know, I'm not sure about telling him or not. Whenever i've told teachers about any problems in the past they've gone way over the top, even so far as to send a "helper" around college with me. Needless to say I was labled a freak and eventually after making no friends in a year, I left.

I've always had trouble taking notes - if it was a lecture or presentation I'd end up trying to write it all verbatim - if I manage to instead just put down "important points" (something I sometimes can do and at others can't - it's somewhat random) then my notes wouldn't make a whole lot of sense when I tried to refer to them later.

In either case I end up absorbing and understanding LESS - thanks to the distraction of trying to take my notes - than if I can just concentrate on the presentation. And in practical hands on demonstration type situations it's the same - TRYING to take notes ended up distracting me terribly from properly taking in what's being shown.

Those issues ended when I left school

In any such situations after leaving school - ie. to do with job training etc. - I've been fortunate in that of course note taking is your own choice (there's no a**hole teacher giving me a hard time about not taking notes) - and the presentations are always given out in complete written form as well anyway - or they're based on technical manuals the students are given copies of or we have access to - which amounts to the same thing - perfect!

In school it was a big pain and caused a lot of grief for me.

Last edited by Wooster on 06 Jun 2011, 11:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Note-taking is a skill. It can be developed with time and effort.

Personally, I only REALLY started taking notes about 4 semesters ago, as that's when I started my graduate classes, which, sadly, I quickly found I couldn't breeze through with minimal effort as I did with my undergrad work. Nowadays, I'm sufficiently good at taking notes...but not making them particularly aesthetically pleasing.

One problem I do have, though, is that when I don't understand the material at hand, I can't just copy it down for later. Hence, oftentimes, if I don't understand the stuff I'm writing down as it's being written down, eventually I become overwhelmed and just have to stop. It's not that big a deal, really, though.

I was never good with note taking. I don't know what is important and what isn't and I can't keep up with listening because then I forget how it was said.

Only time I could remember I was good with note taking was when I was doing a book project and I was reading the book. I wrote down sentences by copying them and writing down in exact what the character was doing and writing down the page number so I can go back to those pages when I do the report. I didn't want to copy down everything so I wrote a little note and the page number. Luckily there was no right or wrong way of doing the process of the report before the real thing by having to type the report about the book.

I'm exactly the same as the OP

- I think that's what my other answer said too - but this is a bit more definite and maybe more useful.

no, never been any good at taking notes, between not knowing what to write and not being able to write fast enough.

I can't take notes either. BUT, I listen and retain much better when I doodle. Not usually anything figurative - usually just abstract geometrics, lots of shading... Lots of times they end up looking like lost temples from ancient civilizations or mandalas or stylized sun symbols. I can commit a whole lecture to memory as long as my hand in moving. If I try and engage my language center while listening, my retention is just gone.

I'm an auditory/tactile learner even though I am highly visual in most other areas. When it comes to learning from someone else - its all thorough the ears while keeping the hands moving to keep everything on track. On my own - its all visual - reading, researching, visualization of the material. I'd recommend anyone in highschool or college to learn what type of learner you are - it can help.

My problem with taking notes is that my handwriting could get messy, and sometimes I would have a hard time reading them.

If I had a test on material in my notes, I might type the notes up on my computer so they are more organized and easier to read.

I can either take notes or listen to the lecture.

If I go back to school I might look at something like this

Smart Pens

I am the same with note taking. Similarly, I also cannot drive and focus on the road while in conversation with someone. My mind needs its full attention on one thing at a time, uninterrupted.

I do well taking in and comprehending lectures - I just struggle to remember key things about it afterwards.

My best bet so far has been to record lectures with either an app on my laptop, my phone, an mp3 player, or a designated recorder device.

[quote="Downtown"]My problem with taking notes is that my handwriting could get messy, and sometimes I would have a hard time reading them.

If I had a test on material in my notes, I might type the notes up on my computer so they are more organized and easier to read.[/quote]
This, too. Actually, I started carrying a laptop to most of my classes and taking notes on it so that my terrible penmanship wouldn't interfere. Learning to take notes on it was a whole new world, but it's doable.

The general idea is to make an exhaustive list of every word/phrase that could come up in a class and simplify it into a small code like..."<ld>" for the lowercase delta...or "{{m}}" for "left lbrace matrix{} right rbrace" which is some OpenOffice mathspeak code...and then plug these codes into auto-correct so that you're barely typing anything and still getting a lot of information down.

It only takes a few weeks of persistence to get it, really. My profs tend to doubt that I'm doing anything useful on the computer, so when I show them that I'm able to instantly pull up pretty renditions of everything that happened in class since the first one, they are often quite impressed.

This discussion has made me realize that its not just me that has big problems both taking in the lecture and writing notes, I eventually reverted to a dictaphone but I did eventually leave uni as I couldn't cope with all of the people and being so fa away from home. I'm hoping to start it again with the open uni as my husband is doing a degree with them and I really like the bigger emphasis on your own learning and having less lectures and day schools, they also seem more supportive.

I just wish that unis would just record lectures, as some do, and just post them online. If this was possible I could then listen to the lecture and go back to the recording later to take notes. This would mean I could pause and rewind it and take notes easier.

I hate the way the uni and education system in general have decided that their own view of the way people learn is the right one and anyone who needs to do it differently is obviously abnormal or even doing it wrongly.

Notes suck.

I can either listen OR I can write. Not both.

If I'm focused on note taking, I don't hear what is being said. At best, I scribble a few notes in the margins of my text books. Honestly, I have found that instructors demand you take notes more for their own ego's sake; you have to hang on their every word and transcribe it ALL.

Ideally, I learn by reading or I absorb the concepts via osmosis by sitting in class.

Don't take notes. I just listen and absorb whatever is on the board/overhead/Powerpoint/whatever.