Notes = Art?
Elementary, middle and high school taught me the correct way to take notes. Make an outline with lots of roman numerals, learn how to paraphrase and abbreviate, and go back later with a highlighter to discern the main points. I remember having a note specialist come in 11th grade to try to tell us how college students take notes. Throughout college (and even here at PC) the majority of people I see taking notes have a very organized structure. Bullet points, skipped lines, dates, homework - everyone has a system. Everyone doodles. Everyone waits to see if other people are writing things down to see if it's worth writing down for themselves.
No, the man isn't bringing you down, and there's nothing wrong with taking notes the correct way. What purpose do most notes serve? Initially, we write things down to have a record of something we need to remember. Then we might go back once or twice to recall that something. Then what? A filing cabinet, the trash or a binder. Once the test is over or the next meeting takes place, the old notes become worthless.
Let me preface this by saying I have the attention span of a lit match. When I take boring notes, I've never been motivated to go back and read them. I feel like I'm writing things down for the sake of looking like I'm working. But I don't have a photographic memory like Cam Jansen, so what can I do? During college Astronomy (had to get those math and science credits somehow), I experimented with different note-taking styles. I drew huge interconnected cartoon scenes with characters saying the main points in bubbles. I tried writing in different voices, like "Yo this neutron count be whack." I tried writing in complete sentences like a novel, taking notes entirely with pictures, and writing everything as true/false questions. It was definitely more work - pen rarely left the paper - but it helped me remember things better by putting them into a context I understood. I doubt I'll ever care again what the diameters of the planets are, but I still have those notes because they're fun to look back at.
Not every Portfolio Center class requires taking notes, but the ones that do are either 1) giving specific tips like "For a bitmap, scan grayscale at 600 dpi", 2) historical reference like "Paul Rand designed the IBM logo", or 3) thought processes like "get to the brand essence through attributes, target audience, personality and values". Since most of this stuff is directly related to my career field, it's important to take notes that could still be helpful in 30 years. All of my notes are kept in a blank sketchbook, which is putting all the proverbial eggs in one basket since that book also has phone numbers, conceptual sketches and grocery lists. They aren't necessarily works of art, but at least they're more interesting to look at than roman numeral XI subsection C bullet point 2.
Monday, July 12 at 8:08 PM
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