studying taking limited notes?
G.O.A.T
Posts: 138Member
I have a problem, I only have two certs which are very basic.. the thing that holds me back is the note taking.. I find I endup writing the whole darn book, and endup getting frustrated with taking notes and not progressing fast enough through the book causing me to giveup on the cert.
Its very hard to summarise when all the material is relevant, can anyone offer me any advice to combat this issue? its basically holding me back, I am hoping to churn out MTA Networking Fundamentals within two weeks, I am watching the pluralsight videos and found a nice 3hr long course on MVA. I was then going to literally read the official Microsoft book, doing labs along the way without taking notes and just sitting the exam, or simply taking notes of things such as port numbers a wiring standards that I can refer back to the night before , not sure how safe this is really.. how do you all study for exams? do you basically write the whole book out?
Its very hard to summarise when all the material is relevant, can anyone offer me any advice to combat this issue? its basically holding me back, I am hoping to churn out MTA Networking Fundamentals within two weeks, I am watching the pluralsight videos and found a nice 3hr long course on MVA. I was then going to literally read the official Microsoft book, doing labs along the way without taking notes and just sitting the exam, or simply taking notes of things such as port numbers a wiring standards that I can refer back to the night before , not sure how safe this is really.. how do you all study for exams? do you basically write the whole book out?
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Note taking, at least for me, serves two purposes. First, it forces me to activate a different part of my brain if I hear or read something, then write it out on paper or on a laptop. I tend to remember things more easily. Second, notes serve as my personal how-to guides. I read from many different sources and watch videos from different sources. I take all the different perspectives on a particular topic and come up with my own guide with "gotchas" and things to watch for, best practices, etc.
Sometimes, I just watch videos from a primary source and type the notes directly from their slides, take screen shots of their diagrams and put them all into one document. Then I go watch something else and if something seems interesting or makes the lightbulb turn on over my head, I add it to that document. If I read something interesting from a book, add it to the document. Run into something at work or somebody shows me something, add it to the document. I've accumulated an entire series of folders, all organized by technology and topics that I can go to when needed.
One thing I'll mention, though, is avoid studying other people's notes. Notes are a personal thing put together with your own thoughts. Somebody's notes might make sense to them because they wrote them but may not make any sense to you. It's just more of a personal mind-**** kind of thing for me.
Hope this helps.
It is very important to discern what is it that you already know and what is it that you need to remember/learn but is not sticking with you. Once you sift through that pile, focus on what you need to remember/learn.
I had the same problem years ago. And now the question is: how do you decide what is meaningful to you? Is it maybe that the explanation given in the book isn't sticking with you so you need to rephrase it in your own words?
Your notes definitely need to be succinct. Stick with that principle.
As far as taking notes from a book, there's a few useful ways I can think of that might help you. As you're reading a page, either highlight important sentences with a highlighter or use a pen to put a little dash next to important sentences in the left-hand column. Then after you've read a page or two or even the whole chapter, you can go back through and look at the sentences you've highlighted or put a dash. You'll probably notice at this point that everything you marked important doesn't need to be written down and you can more easily summarize what you picked. My process might be a little bit lengthier than most people's but it helps me go over the material a few times as I go along (this is all before I do a final review in the few weeks before the exam). Just my two cents and this is what works for me. Hope this helps!
I've improved by getting ebooks and printing them. Then, instead of taking notes in a different notebook, I highlight instead. I have 3 different highlight colors and each color means something different to me. Orange/Pink = definitions. Yellow = this is noteable. Green/Blue = command or actionable tip.
If it's something I really want to write a note on, I'll do it in the margins and try to write it in my own words.
When I was starting out, I'd often write the entire book in my notes too. Everything was new to me. Additionally, it was hard for me to determine what was important and what wasn't. And often times, even if I knew something wasn't important, I found it cool and wanted to remember it anyway.
As you progress in your IT career, lot of higher level concepts are built on top of lower level concepts. A lot of things are repeated as well. You'll have much less need to take as much notes as you did before.
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