Bigus Dickus
Regular
For med school, I now make my own notes from the prof notes we are provided. Might sound like a waste of time (and in a lot of ways I do despise the fact that I'm just duplicating information I already have), but it helps in several ways.
1 - it forces me to go through the prof notes thoroughly at least once, even if I never look at my notes again. I'm not that disciplined of a studier, so this "system" helps give me a task and goal to aim for.
2 - thinking about the prof notes and deciding what is important and what is forces me to do a little more than just read/browse/rifle though them with a wandering mind.
3 - writing the notes myself seems an added mechanism of learning vs. just reading.
4 - the notes I generate are significantly shorter than the original material, because I paraphrase in shorter ways that make sense to me, leave out rambling thoughts that I know are not testable or significant, leave out things I already know very well (either common sense, or ingrained from previous years/classes/whatever), and don't bother with proper grammar etc.
Those last three really work together - not only do I have to read and comprehend the prof notes well enough to make a decision about what is important and what is not, but I have to understand the material well enough to paraphrase it in my own words to shorten it instead of just retyping what I am reading.
And finally, if I do actually keep on track and have time before an exam to do a comprehensive review, it seems much, much quicker to go through my short version notes than the originals. And if I just need to go take a quick look at a particular thing, I usually know exactly where it is in my notes vs. the sometimes endless search through disorganized prof notes trying to figure out where I had read it.
