subject matter. Your notes should be sequential, following the teacher’s
lecture pattern. Review your notes at the first opportunity following
class. Fill in any blanks and add your own thoughts.
In the library or online: What’s the difference between taking
notes at the library or working at home with library books or those
you’ve found online vs. your own textbooks? Sooner or later you’ll
have to return library books (if you’re allowed to take them out at all),
and librarians tend to frown on highlighting them. And unless you plan
to print out every Web page you find and wield your magic highlighter,
you need an effective system for taking notes right from the source,
whether it’s a library book or Web page.
Score: Are your note-taking skills sufficient to summarize the
necessary data from your textbooks and capture the key points from
classroom lectures and discussions? Do they allow you to get the
information you need from a variety of sources, prepare detailed
outlines, and write good papers? Give yourself an A. If you feel you
are deficient in any one of these, give yourself a B. If notes are what
you pass to your friends in class, give yourself a C.
Class Participation
Most teachers take each student’s class participation into account
when giving grades, no matter how many pop quizzes they pull or
how many term papers they assign. And, you may have discovered,
there are teachers out there who will mark down even those students
who “ace” every paper and quiz if they seem to disappear in the
classroom.
Score: If you are always prepared for class (which means, at the very
least, reading all assigned material, preparing assigned homework and
projects, and turning them in on time), actively participate in dis -
cussions, and ask frequent and pertinent questions as a way of both
trumpeting what you already know and filling in the gaps in that
knowledge, give yourself an A. If you fail in any of these criteria, give
yourself a B. If you aren’t sure where the classroom is, give yourself
a C.
Chapter 1 ■ How to Start Out Right 11