# College note taking... paper? laptop?



## Jeffrey Roberts (Apr 15, 1987)

Hi,This is a question for anyone attending college/university.What do you use to take notes, paper or directly into a laptop?In my days I used 3-hole punched paper that I kept in individual binders for each course. I was wondering what is the norm now.Jeff


----------



## somewhatlost (Jul 28, 2001)

Jeff I used paper during my four years doihng my undergrad and then for teachers college I went to a completely paperless school, everything was done on laptop. So I am of no help to you. I would say though to use whatever is most comfortable for you.kerry


----------



## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Even when I was in school you were starting to see a few people using a laptop for taking notes.Usually what keeps people with pad and paper is if they need to draw things, but the oh...what do they call them....the computers where you can draw on the touch screen...those can make taking notes in class on computer more effective if you have a lot of drawing to dne of my coworkers who is in classes much more recently than me says most people still use paper.But the Univ. here is getting into tech pretty heavily, and I think you almost can't be a student here without a laptop because of how courses are run.It is what you are comfortable with. I think these days if I went back to school I would do the laptop thing just because I type fast and it is easier to read.K.


----------



## jayne (Aug 23, 2004)

I find that the majority of my classes are done on PowerPoint. The instructor will print out the slides in miniature with lines to make your own notes beside.Or the instructor makes their own handouts and you just make your own notes or follow along with what's written on the sheet.Very few of my classes involve no handouts, in which case I use spiral bound notebooks instead of looseleaf. Spiral bound notebooks are easy to take along and keep all your notes in order. It also prevents me from skipping class and photocopying other ppl's notes. This is because it's hard to add in pages in this type of notebook, whereas with a binder and looseleaf you can. The downside is that if you lose your entire notebook you're screwed!Jayne


----------



## britchick (Oct 2, 2003)

On my course hardly anyone uses a laptop, usually we get handouts, as Jayne has already said, and I make my own notes around the handout. Alot of people use those little tape recorders though...


----------



## Paiger81 (Jun 22, 2004)

I graduated 2 years ago. Mainly I used a tape recorder and spiral bound notebooks. The tape recorder came in handy in case I didn't catch everything the instructor said.I'm planning on starting Law School next year, and most of those schools advise you to purchase a laptop(some have purchase plans to buy one) in order to take notes.


----------



## Jeffrey Roberts (Apr 15, 1987)

Thanks everyone. Some good advice here.J*


----------



## Nikki (Jul 11, 2000)

Jeff, nobody at my uni used a laptop unless they had a learning disability- everyone took notes on paper, and maybe typed them up aftewards on a computer.A few had hand help recorders- they are very useful.


----------



## LoneDoc (Aug 25, 2004)

I used these things called friends.







Kind of hard to take notes when you're







Seriously though, I'd invest in a good hand held recorder...maybe even a minidisc player with a decent little microphone. You can transfer the files to your PC easily and actually run the lectures sped up or scan through them a whole lot easier than with tape recordings. Other than that, I'd use paper. It's a lot easier to draw out figures that the professors put up on the board/powerpoint/overhead than to quickly open up MS Paint or whatever and sketch it out with a mouse. Of course, I was a chemistry (professional), molecular biology, and philosophy major so there were a lot of diagrams, structures, etc that you just couldn't do very well on a laptop. Doc


----------



## Jeffrey Roberts (Apr 15, 1987)

Paper it is. There doesn't seem to be much note taking and nobody is using a laptop.Thx,J*


----------

