I’ve never really been one to take notes. Notes don’t help me since I can usually retain a lot of important information on my own, and I know that I most likely will never be able to use my notes on tests, so what’s the point? However, there are so many teachers who insist upon note taking.
In my freshman year of high school, I was in a world history class with a douchebag teacher. Now, I’d already been taught most of the stuff this guy was trying to teach, so I got 80s and 90s on every test we took – without taking notes. Despite that, I got a shitty grade in that class. Why? Because not only did this guy expect us to take notes, but he also graded our notes. You might be saying, “Why didn’t you just take notes and get a good grade?” Well, because fourteen year old me was a stubborn shithead, and I wasn’t going to bend to my teacher’s will just because he wanted us to take notes. I didn’t need to, so I didn’t do it.
Twenty year old me is still a stubborn shithead. Now that I’m in college, I take notes for important things – in class discussion points, main ideas, quotes in readings that I like – but not the way people seem to want me to. Recently I’ve been confronted a couple times with “required” note-taking stuff – such as reading journals, mandatory annotations in assigned readings, etc.. It really gets on my nerves that I’m forced to take notes and ask questions when I either have nothing to say or nothing to ask.
I truly don’t understand this line of thinking outside of making sure everyone read the required texts for class. I don’t think I ever will understand.
In the end, I learn the way I do, and that has nothing to do with taking notes. So stop making me do it!