2 Sept 2014

how I re-wrote my lecture notes in year one, term three

Lectures play a role in the most university courses and on my course, it makes up a significant portion of the teaching. The majority of exam content is based on what we are taught in lectures (with the rest based on self-directed learning) and so I have tweaked the way I re-write notes so that they are more useful when it comes to revision time. 

The first thing to note is that I try and write in bullet points - this breaks down the information and makes it easier to take in. I also try and only write down things I think are relevant because the lectures are often padded out with statistics that don't need to be learnt and sometimes, it is quite obvious what the lecturer wants us to know at this stage and I take every hint I can get during the lectures themselves. 

In terms of colour, I try not to overload the paper with too many colours as I find that it can be distracting. It's nice to have beautiful lecture notes but the main thing is function here so minimalism is key.


Medicine isn't just all about words - anatomy is very visual and it's all very well writing notes on an organ/the Circle of Willis (a network of arterial circulation in the brain)/the GI system but without being able to visualise things, it makes learning everything that bit harder. This is why I draw out as much as I can and then annotate to my heart's content. Drawing things out by hand is another way to help things sink into my brain - there's a reason why there are 'draw it to know it' anatomy books out there on the market!


Occasionally, I integrate hand-drawn diagrams with lecture notes. In the next picture, I transferred the lecture material into a diagram I came up with myself. Doing this allowed me to compartmentalise the massive amount of information provided to us in the lecture and make it easier to learn.


This is essentially how I wrote out my revision notes and I hope to carry as much of this on as I can this year. However, I will try and put it all into one A5 notebook so that it is easier to lug around with me on a daily basis and because I really want to use my Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks!

3 comments

  1. Hello!
    This was an amazing post! As a stationery lover and y13 student, this is really motivating! I really want to study medicine and all these notes are so tempting!

    Thanks for the wonderful pictures :)
    Shaz

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  2. I love looking at your university notes! They just always look so informative and neat! Writing in bullet points is a good idea - I think I'll have to try that this year!

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  3. I love how neat your university notes are! How did you make time to rewrite your notes? I often don't have time to rewrite my lecture notes. I like rewriting my lecture notes because my actual lecture notes are messy and not that informative.

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