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As you begin your postsecondary journey, you’ll soon learn that taking good quality notes is a central element of your learning and success. Your notes serve multiple different purposes that will significantly improve your academic performance. Many students are surprised by how necessary note-taking is in postsecondary compared to high school.

Boosting Your Understanding

By taking notes of your lectures and reading material, you’re forcing yourself to actively process the information being presented to you rather than passively listening or reading. By engaging with the content by transforming it into your personal notes, you’re selecting the most important information, mentally sorting through it and synthesizing it into your own understandable language. This process will significantly boost your comprehension of the material.

Aiding Your Memory

When tests and exams roll around, the notes you have created of your lecture and reading material will assist you with recalling the main ideas and topics that you have encountered. To unlock your memory’s full potential, it’s always a good idea to read over your notes after making them and periodically throughout the semester. This practice of frequently revisiting your notes will keep the material ingrained in your memory.

Simplifying Your Research

The ideas your instructor exposes you to in classes or readings can serve as incredibly valuable concepts for your upcoming assignments. Therefore, your notes can be an efficient starting point for brainstorming your next project. Instructors always have a reason for why they choose to assign certain reading material or present certain ideas in class and one of these reasons is that the ideas you learn can help prompt ideas and solutions to your upcoming class assignments. Instructors often appreciate seeing a student’s direct reference to a lecture or reading concept in their submitted work, so it’s always a good idea to take good quality notes to use as a catalyst for a research topic.