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How prepare for exams and format lecture notes

Take Smart Notes in Nontechnical Courses (What’s the Big Idea?) A “nontechnical course” refers to any course outside of math, science, economics, and engineering. We’re talking about English, history, psychology, political science, anthropology, classics, education— basically anything that doesn’t make frequent use of mathematical formulas. These courses are the domain of ridiculously long read- ing assignments and dignified professors lecturing from behind a podium. The key to doing well in these courses is straightforward: Identify the big ideas. That’s what it all comes down to. Exams in nontechni- cal courses focus entirely on big ideas—they require you to explain them, contrast them, and reevaluate them in the light of new evi- dence. If you are aware of, and understand, all of the big ideas pre- sented in the course, these tasks are not so difficult, and strong grades will follow. As you would expect, lectures are a major source of these big ideas. Identifying them, however, is not a trivial task. Professors ram- ble. And they rarely start a class by clearly identifying the big ideas that will be explored. Instead, they tend to dive right in, leaving the poor student to separate on his own the interesting conclusions from the digressions. “A whole lot of superfluous things are said in each class,” explains Jeremy, a straight-A student from Dartmouth. “You have to learn how to pick out which is which.” This is hard, and as such, most stu- dents don’t take very good notes in nontechnical courses, which has major ramifications when it comes time to study. If your notes don’t already clearly identify the big ideas, then you are going to be forced to try to figure them out from scratch while reviewing. Allow me to the spoil this particular ending for you: Unless you set aside dozens of hours to prepare, you’re not going to accomplish this task, and your grade on the exam becomes a crapshoot. If the exam happens to ask questions that deal with the random assortment of ideas that you do know, then you might do okay, but if it happens to ask questions that deal with many of the big ideas that you never learned, then you will do poorly. Obviously, you want to avoid this situation. The solution is to fig- ure out how to take notes that clearly identify and explain all of the big ideas that are presented so that you can review them later with- out spending any extra time. Let’s jump right into the details of how to accomplish this goal.

Capture Big Ideas by Using the Question/Evidence/Conclusion Structure

The central challenge to note-taking in nontechnical courses is deciding what to write down. Some students attempt to record the lecture verbatim. Don’t do this. “The best advice I can give on note- taking,” explains Doris, a straight-A student from Harvard, “is not to try to write down everything the professor says, because that is both impossible and counterproductive.” Put simply: You can’t write that fast! And you will end up expending too much energy capturing exact words as opposed to identifying big ideas. Instead, remember the following structure:

Question

Evidence

Conclusion

Most big ideas in nontechnical courses are presented in this structure. Why? Professional academics think in terms of questions. This is how they see the world. To them, in order to find big ideas, you must first find questions and then follow a path of evidence to a corresponding conclusion.

Accordingly, this is also how professors lecture. They offer up questions and then walk you through various pieces of evidence en route to an interesting conclusion. You should take advantage of this reality by recording all your notes in a Question/Evidence/Conclusion format.

The basics of this approach are simple. All of the information you write down during class should be associated with a well-labeled question. Each question should be paired with a well-labeled conclusion. When you’re done, your notes for a given lecture should consist only of a bunch of question/conclusion pairs, each separated by points of evidence that support why the conclusion is a reasonable answer to the question. In other words, your goal is to fit all the facts and observations spewed out during class into this nice simple structure.

Keep in mind that professors don’t always state the question. Often they jump right into the evidence and leave it to you to deduce the question being discussed. Don’t be afraid to jot down “QUES- TION:” and then leave the rest of the line blank as you begin recording evidence. Once you figure out what the professor’s talking about, you can go back and fill in this blank.

The same holds true for conclusions. Professors will sometimes hint at a conclusion but not come right out and present a neat endpoint for the current discussion. In this case, it will be up to you to synthesize the question, evidence, and professor’s hints into a conclusion of your own. This is the important part. When you formulate a conclusion, you are cementing a big idea. If you can’t finalize a conclusion before the professor moves on to the next question, simply jot down “CONCLUSION:” and plan to come back later during a lull in the lecture, or immediately following class, to fill in the blank.

Something to remember: Conclusions are rarely simple. Professors often offer conclusions that only summarize the complexity of the issue. Consider, for example, the following question from a literature class: “Who was the greatest novelist of the twentieth century?” A simple conclusion might be: “Hemingway.” And the evidence, in this case, might be several points highlighting the influence and originality of Hemingway’s work. On the other hand, it’s much more likely that a college professor would offer up a more complicated conclusion to this question, perhaps something like: “Different generations answered this question differently, depending on the prevailing social issues of their time.” In this case, the evidence could be excerpts from scholars of various periods talking about their favorite novelists, as well as some observations concerning the differing social climates during each of these eras.

The more classes you take, the better you will become at summarizing a complicated conclusion. In the beginning, don’t be afraid to ask questions to help figure out if your conclusions are correct or not. If you’re shy, go up to the professor after class or become a regular during his office hours. Professors love this kind of student interaction. Use it to help polish your conclusion-sleuthing skills.

Another important tip: Take full advantage of lulls in the lecture. As hinted above, some professors shoot out information so fast that there doesn’t seem to be enough time to jot down every question or think about every conclusion. Sometimes it takes all of your energy just to keep up with the evidence. In this case, wait for slow spots. When the professor wanders off on a personal anecdote, or a student interrupts with an inane question, use this time to hurriedly go back and clean up what you have been throwing down. Record conclusions, clarify questions, and add illustrative formatting to pieces of evidence. If you’re not rushed, spend five minutes after class to polish your notes before packing up. As Doris from Harvard explains: “It’s important to read over your notes right after class to absorb them and make corrections and additions, otherwise you’ll be susceptible to entirely forgetting what was covered that day.” These little moments and adjustments will make a big difference when it comes time to review.

Finally, remember that the number of questions presented in a discussion can vary significantly, depending on the class. One professor may spend an entire lecture exploring a single question, whereas another may move through a dozen small questions in the space of an hour. Often, a professor will introduce a major question for the whole lecture and then spend the time exploring smaller questions that help build toward an overarching conclusion. Again, the more classes you take, the more intuitive these structures will become. “If you pay attention to the contours of a professor’s lecture,” explains Matthew from Brown, “you can determine what he feels is impor- tant.” Listen for pauses, which usually follow key points, and remember that personal anecdotes are often spun during less important parts of the class.

In general, there is no right or wrong way to break up a particular lecture into question/conclusion pairs, so just find a structure that more or less works. Feel free to mess around with your notes as you go along. Add or remove questions on the fly. If certain evidence doesn’t seem to fit with any particular question, no matter how hard you try, that’s okay, just label it as such. Professors have been known to wander. By simply attempting to associate all information with questions and conclusions, you are already a large step ahead of most students when it comes to understanding and internalizing the big ideas.

A Brief Example Presented below is an excerpt from a real college lecture on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It’s followed by an example of how a straight-A student might take notes on this discussion. Keep in mind that the student here would have probably first recorded the evidence bullet points on the fly and then gone back later to fill in the question and conclusion once he had a better idea of where the professor was heading. Also note that the evidence features a lot of aggressive formatting: It’s split up into lists, with words often bolded and capitalized to emphasize their importance. There is no consistent scheme being applied here. The formatting is just what might come naturally to the student during the heat of the moment, to help him understand and underscore the concepts being presented.

Lecture Excerpt: The focus of today’s lecture is what is called the “decline and fall” of the Roman Empire. The idea that the Roman Empire “fell” to the savage, barbarian hordes has been a popular one ever since the eighteenth century. Edward Gibbon’s book by that title pointed to two causes, in his mind, of Rome’s decline and fall: Christians and barbarians. Sometimes he even confused the two. Gibbon argued that Christianity attracted the least intellectual and most superstitious elements in the empire, and that not surprisingly did the triumph to Christianity in the Empire coincide with the downfall of Rome. Christians, according to Gibbon, undermined with their ideas of forgiveness and mercy, the severe patriotic virtues of the Romans that had enabled them to resist heroically the barbarian invasions. Rostovsteff and Toynbee had a similar argument, but instead of blaming the Christians, they looked for social and political causes. Both argued that sometime in the third century, the Roman ruling elite lost its political and intellectual nerve and allowed lesser elements to take over who were much less capable of holding the empire together under the onslaught of barbarians. All of these historians, however, looked at the history of Rome in the years 250–500 from a point of view that geographically was very narrow. These historians lived, after all, in a world where the center of European civilization was no longer the Mediterranean Sea, but Northwestern Europe. They focused, then, on what France and Britain looked like in the 6th century A.D., and assumed that Northwest Europe was the natural heir to classical antiquity. In fact, only in the Latin West was there anything like a decline and fall, and even there the collapse was administrative. It was not an immediate or huge catastrophe, but a gradual ebb of Roman influence over those areas that had begun in the 3rd century. “The ‘Decline and Fall’ of the Roman Empire,” copyright 2000 by Philip Gavitt, Professor of History, St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri. (Online at: http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/cmrs/0221002.html)

Notes on excerpt: QUESTION: Was there really a big “fall” of the Roman Empire? • Roman Empire having a catastrophic decline and fall, at the hands of savage barbarians, popular idea since eighteenth century. • Edward Gibbon—wrote book blaming fall on Christians and barbarians. Christian beliefs replaced heroic virtues, weakened military, let barbarians take over. • Rostovsteff and Toynbee—wrote books with similar arguments – EXCEPT: Not Christians’ fault, but social and political problems that led to weak empire. • HOWEVER: These views are “geographically narrow.” – Authors lived in Europe, so they focused on Europe, only place where it looked like Empire had a big fall. – Loss of power in Mediterranean region not nearly so pronounced . . . no real big decline and fall there. CONCLUSION: The idea of a catastrophic decline and fall of the Roman Empire became popular in European circles, but it overstates reality . . . too much emphasis on what happened to the Empire in Europe.

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Whether it’s philosophy or calculus, the most effective way to im- print a concept is to first review it and then try to explain it, unaided, in your own words. If you can close your eyes and articulate an argu- ment from scratch, or stare at a blank sheet of paper and reproduce a solution without a mistake, then you have fully imprinted that con- cept. It’s not going anywhere.

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Using the Quiz-and-Recall Method for Nontechnical Courses To apply the quiz-and-recall method to nontechnical course material, you first need to construct a practice quiz for each chapter in your study guide. Fortunately, the questions for these quizzes already ex- ist, since, if you’ve followed the advice of Steps #1 and #2, all of your notes should be in a question/evidence/conclusion format. There- fore, the quiz for any given chapter can simply contain all of the ques- tions from the notes you took for that chapter. You can be flexible here. If your notes contain some really broad questions—for exam- ple, an entire lecture that deals with only one idea—break them up into several smaller questions that, together, cover all of the relevant points. On the other hand, if your notes have a bunch of really small questions, you can combine some into larger questions to save space and time. This process is not an exact science; your goal is simply to produce practice quizzes that cover all the material contained in each corresponding chapter. If you can answer all the questions, then you understand all the big ideas. Once you’ve built your practice quizzes, go through them one by one. For each question, try to articulate the matching conclusion and provide some highlights from the supporting evidence. You don’t have to reproduce the material in your notes word for word, but you do need a reasonable summary of the big idea and its support. Here’s the important part: Don’t do this only in your head! If you’re in a private location, say your answers out loud using com- plete sentences. As Lydia from Dartmouth explains: “I find that walk- ing around and saying things out loud commits them to memory in a spectacular way.” If it helps, act as if you’re giving a lecture on the subject. Follow Lydia’s suggestion and pace around while providing your answer. Get your blood pumping. Put some music on in the background. Make it an event. Your study guide was designed to be portable, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a place to be alone. For this crucial step, think beyond the library. I used to do this type of re- view while walking a nature trail on campus. One of the students I in- terviewed reviews on the treadmill. Be creative. Studying doesn’t have to involve long hours sitting at a desk. However, if you are forced to review with other people around and you need to be quiet, then you can write out your answers. “The phys- ical act of writing and the manipulation of the material in my mind was usually enough to keep things straight,” explains Melanie, a straight-A Dartmouth student. You don’t have to format these re- sponses perfectly with correct spelling and grammar, but they must contain all of the pertinent information. No shortcuts. If you don’t say or write it, don’t consider it fully reviewed. Next, put little check marks on your quizzes next to any questions that you had trouble answering. Glance through your study guide to remind yourself of the right answers to these questions. Take a quick break. Now, repeat the first step, except this time you need to answer only the questions that you marked during your first run-through. Put a new check mark next to the questions that you still have trou- ble with. Once again, look through your notes to get the right an- swers, and then take a quick break. Then go back to the practice quiz and try to answer the questions that you marked on your second run- through. You get the idea. Repeat this pattern until you complete a run-through without adding any new check marks. At this point, you’re done! The power of this approach is its efficiency. You spend the least amount of time with the questions that you understand the best, and you spend the most amount of time with the questions that cause you the most trouble. You also have a definite endpoint. There is no need to wonder how much longer you should continue review- ing. Once you finish a round without any more check marks, you’re finished, and not a minute is wasted. Many students are uneasy with how little time is required by this process. They feel like they should continue to review their quizzes, again and again, up until the moment of the exam. This is unneces- sary! The quiz-and-recall method is powerful because it does not de- pend on multiple reviews of the same information. Once you’ve articulated an answer out loud in complete sentences, or recorded it clearly with pencil and paper, it will stick in your mind. As Chris from Dartmouth explains: “[The quiz-and-recall method] takes much less time than people think it does—one day to make the quizzes for the term, and only a few hours to review.”

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