As summer draws to an end, you have to prepare for your next semester or even your first semester of college! Here are some tips and suggestions for classes and preparing for life in the classroom.
Essentials for classes
We all know about the classic paper and pencils or pens needed for class. But there are more options now that you’re an adult and waking yourself up for classes and making eggs and bacon for yourself!
There are other things that you can get for class, to record lectures, but be sure you have your professor’s permission, first. There are computer upgrades you can make too, as they come out just about every few months. You can always just upgrade your software, as there’s no need to get the newest laptop that’s out, as that can get expensive.
Computer Choice
Computer choice is key to what you’re trying to do with it. Whether you’re going into journalism, going for a graphic artist degree or if you’re just needing a laptop to type all the papers that you’re going to have from your classes.
If you’re looking to take online courses, the best option is a laptop that has the best Wi-Fi capabilities (802.11n (802.11ac better and dual band)). More times than not, your college will direct you to which laptop choice would be best for the chosen degree program you decide on.
Retaining Information from Lectures
Per a college professor of mine, the best way to retain information from lectures, is you hear the lecture, you write or type it out into your notes, then you go back to your notes within 24 hours and review. That’s the best way, which I’ve found to work for retaining information.
Another way is repetition: using words like, as discussed in the previous lecture or going back to this point, sets off an alarm in your head saying “I should probably write this down.” Be sure to add in your own language so that you can understand it when you look back over your notes.
Styles of Note Taking
1. Outline method: The name says it all, it’s also the most popular. This is because it lets you organize your notes in a neat, structured form.
2. The Cornell Method: You start with the main topic of the discussion at the top of the page, then you add in the keywords of the lecture to go back and lookup. You add in some key thoughts and questions. Then at the bottom, you summarize the lecture in your own words.
3. The Boxing Method: This note-taking style consists of boxes or bubbles of thoughts and key points of the lectures. It’s a good style to keep your notes organized as far as subtopics inside of the bigger main topic of the lecture.
Devices You Can Use to Help Study
Dragon Dictation: It’s an app on your smartphone that types up your words for you. You talk to your phone and it dictates your entire finals paper for you to download on your computer for any fixes needed or misspellings that happen from your phone not catching a full word.
Rocketbook: For those of you that like the old-fashioned way of doing things (paper and pen), the Rocketbook is for you. It is a special notebook that you take notes with the special Pilot FriXion pen. When you’re done taking notes for that class, you can send your notes to cloud for you to access when you get home on your laptop or desktop.
National Student Services, Inc.
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