UWP 01

May 29, 2018

Michele Zugnoni

Ziyuan Chen

Journey of Note-Taking

From the first day I decided to buy a notebook, starting my academic study journey, to

now in UC Davis, I can’t remember how many notebooks I used to take down what I learned.

Taking notes in lectures seems to be an easy thing for me. However, as the level of difficulties of

the studies increased, one of my teachers pointed out that I had problems in taking notes, but I

didn’t care about it. However, I found myself genuinely having trouble in taking notes. It

knocked me down. I was confused on why I could not do such easy work well. Nevertheless, I

finally found my way of taking notes.

To start, at the beginning of my note-taking journey, I just knew that I should take down

what teacher said, but I had no idea which part was necessary. When the first time I tried to take

notes, I found out that the teacher was talking too fast during lectures because we had to cover

numerous chapters within one or two months. Consequently, I had no time to take down

everything that the teacher said. So, I just randomly jotted down some words that I heard or saw

in the lecture, like some professional nouns or some definitions. However, I thought it was not a

big deal. I told myself that I would understand what I wrote in the future review sessions.

Nevertheless, the result was I failed to recognize what I wrote in my notebook right after the

class. I just saw some common nouns, meaningless arrows, and irrelevant lines. Besides, I could
not find out a way to improve my notes taking skill.

The note that I took in the first time, really messy. Now, I still could not figure out what I wrote.

Although I expected to become a better note-taker, I still had no idea on how to improve

my note-taking skill. Thus far, I was keeping the habit from my first day of note taking, taking

down what the teacher says. Nevertheless, I found out this strategy didn’t work well on some of

the teachers. For instance, my Linguistic professor, he had no PowerPoint or other teaching tools.

During the whole one-hour lecture, he just kept talking. I could not understand what he was
talking about because he had a strong accent. Consequently, I had no idea how to take notes. I

tried to take down the information that he wrote on the blackboard, but I still could not

understand them. I suffered every Linguistic lecture. Every time I went back to the dorm and

tried to do my Linguistic assignments, I felt lost. I could not understand what I wrote in my

notebook. It was just some fractions of essential concepts on it. At first, I thought that it was the

professor’s problems; however, my friend, Zimmy didn’t have any trouble in taking notes and

reviewing.

I tried to draw some shapes and write some phonetics in this page.
 Then, I started to think that why I could not take notes efficiently and precisely? Like the

first note-taking experience, I could not take notes down because of the fast-paced lecture. In the

Linguistic course, I didn’t write

any useful information on my

notebook because of the teaching

style of that professor. Is it all my

fault? I had no answer at that

moment.

I only used black pen to write down two functions but did not wrote the

Consumption Function.

However, I got all the answers from a person named Shuyang Si who was the teaching

assistant in Agricultural and Resources Economics 100B course (ARE 100B). He answered all my

questions and helped me change my habits of note-taking. In the first discussion session, I brought

my notebook to Shuyang Si, to ask a question about one fundamental concept. After he answered

my question, he pointed out that my notes were not comprehensive. I began to complain that the

professor was moving too fast from one concept to another and I did not know how to write down

all the useful information. Then he taught me that I could use a cellphone to take pictures of those

PowerPoint slides or words on the blackboard. Also, he said that I have to preview the lectures. In

this way, I will basically know which concept is more important. Moreover, he also mentioned

that when professors are moving too fast, I may use some abbreviations to represent repeated words.

These strategies surprised me. I tried to apply these strategies into the ARE100B. It worked. In the

final week, when I wanted to review some ideas, I found out that I can understand all my notes!

As a result, I got an A on my ARE 100B course.

It contained examples to illustrate concepts and some graphs to explain the concept better.

To sum up, note-taking seems to be an easy thing since every student needs to take notes

during study time. Nevertheless, it is hard to become a good note-taker. I felt grateful for that

TA, Shuyang Si. He is like a lighthouse that guides me. It is not too late to realize how to take

notes correctly. Now, I think I am literate in note-taking, and I believe that this skill will help me

achieve more accomplishments in my academic study.

I used subtitles and abbreviations to improve my note-taking.