by Matt Bird

Created on: June 16, 2009   Last Updated: February 03, 2010

The second your first college teacher opens their mouth and starts spewing out material, I guarantee you that you'll have a miniature panic attack. You may have thought high school teachers were fast, but buddy, you ain't seen nothing 'til you've sat through a college class.

And, really, it's not so bad if you're just listening. All they're doing is talking, after all, and they'll gladly repeat troublesome concepts here and there. But if you're trying to take notes? Consistently? Good luck keeping up at first. You'll try to keep your handwriting neat and tidy like it was in high school and fail abysmally. You won't have times to draw little red underlines with your ruler for key concepts because in the time it takes to do that the teacher will already have moved on. The old rules of copying straight from the chalkboard are gone, friends.

But don't panic too much. You'll get used to note taking with time and practice. Your hands will naturally speed up, and you'll catch all the important stuff churned out with the reams of interesting yet not test-worthy chaff. And, to aid in this endeavor, there are a few things you can do to make your note-taking a bit easier overall. Keep them in mind and you'll simplify this burden.

- Don't print. Write. Printing, no matter how fast you may be, will never be as fast as free-flowing cursive. It may be harder to read in the end, but while you're writing you don't have the luxury of neatness.

- Don't write in complete sentences. Make extensive use of shorter, to-the-point statements that rely strictly on the information and not at all on the rules of grammar. These are notes for you and no one else, so nobody is going to criticize you for leaving out a few periods here and there.

- Use short forms. Don't write and, write &. Don't write participation, write partic. Establish a system of common, shorter versions of words that you can write out quickly yet still understand just fine. Longer words should almost never be completely written out, and in most cases you can probably substitute in something shorter anyway (unless the word is a vital part of the subject of the lecture).

- Don't allow your attention to waver for even a second. The lecture may be boring and it may be long, but extremely important facts can jump out at any time. If you start to pay attention to the other people in the class and forget about the teacher you'll quickly lose your place - in which case you may as well just get up and leave until the teacher

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