LPT Request: Making notes for studying, avoid "essay-like" styles, instead use schemes, tables, pictures and hierarchies as much as possible

Submitted by Tiara2002 t3_11cpx2m in LifeProTips

Back at school had a biology teacher, who gave us all writen information this way. She never required us to memorize anything — all tests were with open books and notes. I actually remember a lot of material to this day. I am not telling you to not memorize, but these methods of making notes is a lot better, because they actually shows our brain the connections between information. "Essays" usually are too effortless, bulky and have little sense if you struggling with the subject.

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Pro_CKM t1_ja4yqtc wrote

I take my best notes all on a massive excel sheet. I wish I started this method ages ago.

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yakisikliadam t1_ja4zd7t wrote

How does this method work? How does the excel help you? I ask because I find having the table format helps for me but interested to hear more.

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Pro_CKM t1_ja52jxx wrote

For context: I'm studying nursing and I haven't fully fleshed out these documents because I started this method only fairly recently. Lots of memorization involved I my classes and I haven't retained last semester's information. And later classes build on top of each other heavily. Some of the classes I've taken are:

Pathophysiology Pharmacology Fundamentals & Health Assessment

Each of these classes/subjects have their own link to a document (except I actually find it easier to have Health Assessment and Fundamentals combined into one link/document).

Each link/document can have several sheets, which help me organize the material within these subjects by organ system. For example, for Pathophysiology I have it divided into the following sheets all in one link:

Cardiovascular System Respiratory System Integumentary System Nervous System Urinary System Digestive System etc

So now I can organize all my information from my classes in a way that's very easily accessible and easy to understand. The tables are organized, sorting everything by Disease Name, Definition/Pathophysiology, Causes/Risk Factors, Signs and Symptoms of the Disease (including the reason these manifestations occur), and potential complications that the disease may lead to down the road.

If this were Pharmacology, it would be separated by Drug name, Drug Class, Mechanism of Action, Side Effects, etc.

It's super nice to have everything all in one place, easy to find, easy to understand, easy to compare/contrast, and easy to edit. Plus, it's all saved online in the cloud (I used to do written notes with multiple notebooks I wouldn't even really go back to). I highly recommend this method of studying for subjects that are memorization-heavy.

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wunkadurgenfaceball t1_ja73qpa wrote

Nurse here, graduated May 2020. Remember. The. Interventions.

I always felt like I focused on learning the background of everything like risk factors and the Patho, but the tests are almost 80% interventions based and it will feel like they spend only 2 seconds on it in class.

Nice technique tho - mine was white board spam and trying to get all the info onto one paper for a subject.

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keepthetips t1_ja4by9k wrote

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DroolingSlothCarpet t1_ja4dbgc wrote

>— all tests were with open books and notes.

Boy you got a lot out of your education. It's open book, who could fail?

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Xikub t1_ja4drk8 wrote

You, by the sounds of your critical thinking.

Closed book tests are a test of memory, while open book tests can actually test the understanding of a subject by having all the basic information available and then requires the use of finding and correctly utilising that information to get the desired answer.

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Tiara2002 OP t1_ja4dn4i wrote

I'm not talking about grades here. I never studied biology after school, but still from this class I remember the most (a lot most) material

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wrongseeds t1_ja4eebk wrote

Some of the hardest tests I’ve ever taken were open book.

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