How To Take Notes: From A Textbook

I think a lot about what it is to be a woman in science, but I have the inherent privilege that comes with being a white woman to shield me from the worst of it. I had an absolutely eye opening conversation with classmate of mine last year, and I’d like to share it with y’all.

This other lab member of mine became a great friend of mine around the time I decided to switch labs. She had a different PI and was a year ahead of me, so I was comfortable bringing my concerns to her. Her support was instrumental in my decision and my current happiness in my new lab. She presented in a lab meeting the day I went to the director of our grad school and requested a change in PIs, so I missed it. I knew she had been nervous (it was meant to prepare her for for her preliminary exam) so I asked her the next day how it had gone.

Now. To put this in context, I need to explain my old PI. He was an almost eighty year old white man, and if it wasn’t his opinion, it was wrong. He was very, very bad at being a PI. He was also probably worse at being a co-worker. I recall at least three lab meetings that devolved into him yelling with another PI, and several student presentations that he was terribly mean and unnecessarily fixated on insignificant details. So it comes as no shock that he went after my friend.

My old PI (who was not involved in bacteria research AT ALL) had taken some issue with the strain of bacteria she was using, one that was selected based on clinical relevancy. This had resulted in a dissolving of my friends presentation into him interrogating her about this strain, interrupting her explanations and generally getting louder and louder and louder until her PI stepped in. Upon hearing all of this, I apologized profusely for his behavior and asked how she was doing now. She expressed to me how she had struggled to remain calm, and how she was ultimately grateful to her PI for de-escalating the situation.

Now here’s the part that hit me hard: my friend explained to me that she was grateful mostly because she wasn’t sure how much longer she would have been able to withstand his nonsense without raising her voice, to which I responded, “he would have deserved it. You were right and he was wrong, and it’s beyond time he was put in his place. He’s not your PI, and he’s not on your committee, so I think you would have been wholly justified in standing up for yourself.”

“If I’d had raised my voice at him, even a little, I would have been labeled an angry black woman, and everyone in that room would have written me off as a stereotype of my race.”

Oh. Ohhhhh. OH that hit me in the heart and the brain and the soul and I’m shocked I didn’t get a bruise. My sweet, strong, smart friend, who was a mom and a wife and a brilliant student and a kind soul, had to weigh every word out of her mouth with a gravity I couldn’t understand, and had never considered until that moment. And it probably says a lot about my white privilege and my bubble I’ve grown up in that I was 24 years old before this came across to me. But this conversation has lived in my head ever since, and my perspective of the world shifted because of it. I think what made this particular incidence so eye opening to me was that being interrogated by this man over stupid details was something that happened to me regularly, and had just pushed me over the edge. Realizing some level of privilege had protected me all along from it being worse was enlightening.

I’ve benefitted my whole life from white privilege (a thing my family doesn’t think exists). I’m nowhere near perfect as an ally or a friend or a person, but I want to be better at standing up for and alongside those who need the protection my privilege offers. I share this now in case it resonates with someone else the way it did with me.

Black lives matter. Black people matter. Your hearts matter and your ideas matter and your feelings and your dignity and hurt and anger and fear. It shouldn’t require stating but it does, and I am so so sorry for your pain, for every situation I wouldn’t think twice in that you have to navigate carefully. I’m sorry, and I stand with you.

Pro-tips for rookie academic writers after grading about a quarter of the midterm papers for my undergrad Shakespeare class:

If your entire argument can be made in one sentence, it’s too simple. 

If your argument cannot be summarized in one sentence, it’s too broad.

If your argument can’t be argued with, it’s not an argument.

Teachers don’t want you to fawn on the material; they want you to engage with it. Just fangirling over Shakespeare isn’t going to get you an A.

Avoid big sweeping generalizations in your opening sentences (and everywhere else). “Since the dawn of time” or “Of all the playwrights who have ever lived,” etc. etc. are superlatives you can’t possibly prove.

If you’re going to say that an author/text does something, you’d better be ready to demonstrate how. 

Your opinion is not analysis. Learn the difference. 

“Interesting” and “intriguing” are useless words that tell a reader nothing about the text. Be more specific.

Don’t assume you know a character’s motives without evidence from the text. Don’t assume you know an author’s motives, full stop.

If you’re a man making an argument about female perspectives in a text, have a woman read it before you turn it in. Just trust me on this one. 

yeah chem, its not like i have a social status to live up to. 112115.

Very long but interesting chapter : depressive and bipolar disorders

(Don’t you love when your notes end right at the bottom of the page? I do!)

Psychology is crazy overwhelming but so interesting. I wish I could major in such a fascinating field but I need something that I can obtain more connection and success with. This is one of the subjects where my motivation and organization skills are on point, I hope I can feel this passion with other subjects. (IG POST) 

[ 02.05.16 • 4/100 DAYS OF PRODUCTIVITY ] 4 days till my exams yikes D: my first exam isn’t even geography but the subject is so content heavy so I’m studying first even though I have 8 days to the exam ahhhh didn’t really bother putting a super nice set-up for the picture because meh good luck to those having their mid-years or their finals!!

Some melodies have soul in them, don't they? What you listen to in instrumental music or classics that has the same feeling? I absolutely loved Petricor that you recommended.

Oh, I do.

Beethoven, Für EliseTwo Steps from Hell, Big SkyDebussy, Clair de LuneChopin, Nocturne op 9 n°2Bedrich Smetana, VltavaLudovico Einaudi, ErosLudovico Einaudi, DivenireLudovico Einaudi, PrimaveraLudovico Einaudi, NefeliPhilip Glass, DuetErik Satie, GnossiennesDario Marianelli, Dance With MeDario Marianelli, AtonementDario Marianelli, Cee, You and TeaClint Mansell, Lose YourselfTom Tykwer, The EscapeTom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas FinaleYann Tiersen, Summer 78Hans Zimmer, Cornfield ChaseJohn Wasson, CaravanTchaikovsky, Dance of the SwansTchaikovsky, Waltz of the FlowersProkofiev, Dance of the KnightsCraig Armstrong, OpeningAdolphe Adam, Dance of the WillisPhilip Glass, Morning PassagesZoe Conway, Half Day RoadJoe Hisaishi, Dragon BoyMartin Phipps, Saint PetersburgEmile Pandolfi, Once Upon a December

etc.

💓 day 4 of 100 days of productivity 💓

studying for my final exam of the semester (!!!) with my brand new mildliners! i can definitely say that it took me a long time to decide if i really needed them, but now that i have them, i personally couldn’t imagine studying without them. if you’re on the fence about purchasing them, like i was, i highly recommend them! hope you’re having a fantastic day xx

9 points about language learning and how I’m learning 20+ of them

I’ve had a few requests to write about how I learn my languages. To different degrees, there’s currently 20+ of them and I don’t see myself stopping yet. The thing is, learning languages comes really easily to me and I want to share, maybe it will be helpful to somebody else.

First, I’d like to have a look at first versus second language acquisition. I’m a linguist and I’m super interested in Child Language Acquisition. That however, has a critical age of 14 (or so I was always told) and is then no longer possible and any language learned after that age will never progress as quickly or can’t be learned perfectly. Well. I disagree. The simple difference is - first language acquisition is how you acquired your first language(s) as a child. By imitating, finding patterns, etc. Second language acquisition is what you know from language courses. Vocabulary, irregular verb tables, endless exercises. Now that we got some of the terminology off the table, let me see how I actually learn languages: 1) I utilise elements of the first language acquisition rather than second language I’ve only studied vocab a couple times at school, when I put them into Quizlet or when someone forced me to. I’ll get back to it in another point. I don’t learn patterns. I know there is one and I let the input do its magic of slithering into my head. Again, more on that in point 2. You always get told you’ll learn a language better when you’re thrown into the country where they speak it.  And it’s so true because of the processes behind it. Because input and immersion are the keys and that’s how children learn, too.

2) I don’t cram languages. I process them.

Around langblrs, I keep seeing all the ‘crying over verb tables’, ‘trying to learn a 1000 words this week’ and the like. That may work for you, sure. But I’ve never done that. I did learn a few irregular verb patterns for German in class, but while I could recite them, it wasn’t helpful. In Irish, I sometimes still wonder which verb ‘An ndeachaigh tú?’ comes from. The thing is, you’re able to process language. You know this word is probably irregular. If you come across it and don’t know what the irregular form is, look it up. After you’ve looked it up for the tenth time, you’ll probably remember by then. Same with anything else. Don’t try to learn things by heart when it comes to languages. 3) Vocab?? Same rule applies here. I’ve only learned vocab at school and then a handful of times when I wasn’t too lazy to put it into Quizlet (which is fun and I learn something, but it’s more of a useful pastime than anything). When you read, just skip the words you don’t know and only really look them up if you can’t tell by context. NEVER translate vocabulary. I mean, sure, look up what it means, but don’t connect it to the word itself. Connect it to the meaning. Pictures work better. As for abstract words, imagine the concept. Just try not to bridge the meaning of the word with your native language. Languages in your brain are meant to be two separate units. Unless you’re working on a translation piece, they shouldn’t be ‘touching’. 4) I use example sentences for everything.

Grammar guides are useful but rather than learning all the rules at once, take it one step at a time and remember some example sentences and let them guide you through the grammar rule you need.

5) Input is everything. Output is hard, but you’re basically imitating input and utilizing patterns you know (or think you know). Let me give you an example. Let’s say I’m writing a piece on my daily routine, for example. I make use of the example sentences and try to tailor them to my own needs. Trial and error, if I make a mistake, it’s okay, if somebody points it out, I probably won’t make it next time. As I progress, I will gradually remove the mistake. Same goes to new words and new verbs. Use the input you’ve got. Does this verb sound like some other verb you’ve heard before? It’s might have a similar conjugation pattern. You can check it, you don’t have to.

6) Learning languages should NOT be stressful! I never stressed over learning a language. Sure, I’m frustrated that after a year and a half of learning Irish, I’m not 100% fluent, but I’ve never stressed over it. I’ve never cried over it. I’ve never cried over a language (I only cried after a French oral exam which I thought I failed). Don’t be hard on yourself and try learning through a method that’s not stressful. Watch videos for children. Read books for children. Write down cool things in your target language(s). 7) You’ve learned a language before. Why wouldn’t you be able to learn it now in a very similar way? This is basically me saying that I have little belief in the efficiency of pure second language acquisition. Maybe a few individuals can reach fluency by cramming a language, the thing is, I think that if we concentrate on processing instead of remembering, just like we did when we were children, we can reach better results in a shorter amount of time. Also, if this is your third or fourth language, compare to languages you already know. 8) I don’t start with basics. I start ‘somewhere’.

Delve into the language the second you’ve started. Are you overwhelmed? That’s fine! You’ll find your way around it. Start with word meanings, finding out what kind of sentences those are and then build your way around it. Don’t start saying ‘hello’ and ‘I’m from’. Those are cool, but usually, they are used in a different way when you actually go out and speak. You’ll get them along the way.

9) Don’t rely on instructions (only). Rely on yourself.

This is just my two cents. I’ve pieced this together trying to remember how I’ve learned what I’ve learned and comparing it to how others around me learned. Please, let me know if it makes any sense. I may edit this and post this again later if I have any more ideas. Feel free to contribute or to bombard me with questions. I’m happy to answer.

adapted from this response

1. Write your notes in a way where you can test your retention and understanding. 

Many people write notes that do a great job summarizing their materials but their notes are not designed to promote learning, retention or diagnosis of their weaknesses. But my notes can – and so can yours. Simply put my notes can be used like flashcards because I write them in a form where I separate a “stimulus” from a “response.”  The stimulus are cues or questions (think: front side of flashcard), while the response is the answer to the cue (think: back of flashcard).  But the stimuli are to the left of a margin, while the responses are to the right. The key advantage of this is that just by putting a sheet of paper on top of your notes, you can hide the responses, while leaving the stimuli visible. You can have multiple margins and multiple levels of stimuli and response for greater information density. When you get good at this you can write notes in this form in real-time. To get some idea of what I’m talking about google for “Cornell Notetaking method”. My notetaking method is a variant of this. I usually use completely blank paper to do this because regular lined paper has too small a margin. To give you an idea of how powerful this notetaking method can be, I learned several courses just hours before the exam and still got an “A” in all of them during a difficult semester where I had too many competing priorities to spend long hours studying. Had it not been for this notetaking method I don’t think that would be possible. 2. Develop the ability to become an active reader (this is the perhaps the most important advice I have to share). 

Don’t just passively read material you are given. But pose questions, develop hypotheses and actively test them as you read through the material. I think the hypotheses are part of what another poster referred to when he advised that you should develop a “mental model” of whatever concept they are teaching you.  But a mental model can be much more than simple hypotheses. Sometimes the model resembles a story. Other times it looks more like a diagram. But what they all have in common is that the explain what is going on. Having a mental model will give you the intuition and ability to answer a wider range of questions than would be otherwise possible if you lacked such a mental model. Where do you get this model? You creatively develop one as you are reading to try to explain the facts as they are presented to you.  It’s like guessing how the plot of a movie, before it unfolds. Sometimes you have to guess the model based on scarce evidence. Sometimes it is handed to you. If your model is a good one it should at least be able to explain what you are reading. Having a model also allows you to make predictions which can then be used to identify if your model is wrong.  This allows you to be hypersensitive to disconfirming evidence that can quickly identify if your model is wrong. Oftentimes you may have two or more models that can explain the evidence, so your task will be to quickly formulate questions that can prove one model while disconfirming the others. To save yourself time, I suggest focusing on raising questions that could confirm/disprove the mostly likely model while disproving the others  (think: differential diagnoses in medicine). But once you have such a model that (i) explains the evidence and (ii) passes all the disconfirming tests you can throw at it then you have something you can interpolate and extrapolate from to answer far more than was initially explained to you. Such models also make retention easier because you only need to remember the model as opposed to the endless array of facts it explains.  But perhaps more importantly, such models give you intuition. Of course, your model could be wrong, but that is why you actively test it as you are reading, and adjust as necessary. Think of this process as the scientific method being applied by you, to try to discover the truth as best you can. Sometimes you will still be left with contradictions that even your best models cannot explain. I often found speaking to the professor after class to be a time efficient of resolving these contradictions. I discovered mental modelling as a survival mechanism to pass my studies at the University of Waterloo – where their teaching philosophy is misnomer because their teaching philosophy is to not teach as well as they could. You can see this from their grading philosophy. Although they don’t use a bell curve or other statistical grade adjustment, they make their exams so hard that the class average is usually between 68 (C+) and 72 (B-) in spite of the fact that their minimum admission grades are among the highest in Canada (you need more than A+ to get into several of their engineering programs). The only way they can achieve such low test averages from otherwise high performing students is by holding back some of what they know, and then testing what they didn’t explain well in lecture on their exams; or by not teaching to the best of their ability.   This forces students to develop the ability to teach themselves, often from materials that do not explain things well, or lack the introductory background knowledge needed to understand the material. I realized I could defend against such tactics by reverse engineering the results into theories that would produce those same results; i.e. mental model induced from scarce facts.     Then when I got to MIT I found myself in a place with the opposite teaching philosophy. Unlike Waterloo, if the whole class got an “A” the MIT professors would be happy and proud (whereas at Waterloo an “A” class average would be the cause for a professor’s reprimand). The mental modelling skills I developed at Waterloo definitely came in handy at graduate school because they enabled me to learn rapidly with scarce information. 3. Be of service to your fellow classmates.

I’ve personally observed and heard anecdotal stories that many students in highly competitive programs are reluctant to share what they know with their peers; a good example being the vast number of students in a top ranked science programs competing for the very few coveted spots in med school. I’ve seen people in such situations be afraid to share what they know because the fear it could lead to the other students “getting ahead” while leaving them behind. I would actually recommend doing the opposite: share liberally. You can’t expect help from others if you are unwilling to help others yourself. I spent hours tutoring people in subjects I was strong in. But, conversely those same people were usually happy to help me with my weaknesses when I needed it. I also found it easier to get good teammates – which is essential to getting good grades in team-based classes. I found I learned a LOT from other people. And their questions helped me to prepare for questions I may not have thought of – some of which would appear on the exams. 4. Understand how the professor grades. 

Like the real world, the academic world is not always fair. You need to understand who is grading you and what they are looking for. Oddly, if you actually answer questions as written, you won’t get full marks from some teachers. Some professors expected more than the answer. Some only accepted the answers taught in class as opposed to other factually correct answers – which coincidentally can easily happen if you rely heavily on mental models. Some expected you to not even evaluate whether the answers to their multiple choice answers were true or not; only to notice which answer choices aligned or did not align with the theories taught in class.  Some highly value participation in which case you ought to have a mental model of what they are teaching based on their assigned readings. The sooner you know who you are dealing with, the sooner you can adjust to their way of grading. Thankfully I considered the vast majority of my professors to have graded in a fair manner. 5. Get involved in research while still in undergrad.

Academics is a means to an end. To me that end was “solving problems” and “building stuff” specifically systems and organizations.  Depending on the school you apply for, your research may be just as important, if not more important, than your grades. In fact if all you have are good grades your chances of getting into a top ranked CS program with a research component (e.g. MIT, CMU) are slim to nil; though you might still be able to get into a top-ranked courseware-based Masters (such as Stanford where there is no masters thesis). I did an Artificial Intelligence research project in undergrad and posted it on the internet. Not long after it was cited in three patents from IBM, AOL and another inventor. Then 40 other people cited my work. I feel this helped me get into MIT because they saw that I could come up with theories with practical applications. It also led to internships with top research teams whose work I am still in awe of. This research also helped my graduate application. None of this would have been possible if I didn’t do research in undergrad. 6. Attend classes.

I do not understand the students who claim they did well without attending class. Many professors will only say certain things in class. Many classes only present some of the material in class. If you don’t attend class you simply won’t get that material. You also won’t be able to ask immediate follow-up questions. I also found speaking to the professor after class was an efficient way to resolve contradictions I had found with my mental model. 7. Time management is key – especially in undergrad. 

In my competitive undergrad program I once learned that a friend who achieved top 5% status actually timed how long he ate. While I do not suggest going to such extremes I offer this modest advice. I suggest spending no more than 30 minutes trying to solve a problem you can’t solve by yourself before appealing to office hours or another knowledgeable student. I also suggest you ask questions of your professor during or after class as opposed to leaving the class confused. This reduces wasted time in an environment when time is a very precious commodity. 8. Going out and having fun is conducive to good grades. 

In my early undergrad years I studied as hard as I could. And I thought this meant putting in as many studying hours as possible. But I later realized that going out and having fun refreshed the mind and increased grades. Unfortunately it took at least 2 years for me to understand this lesson. 9. Learn how to do advanced Google searches.

This is an essential skill that enables you to answer your own questions, quickly. At a minimum I suggest you learn how to use the following Google search operators  ~, -,*, AND,OR, and numeric ranges via the double dot (“..”) operator.  The “site:” operator is also often helpful. I also found adding the word “tutorial” to a Google search often yields great introductory materials. 

10. Turn weaknesses into strengths.

While studying for standardized exams I learned the importance of addressing one’s weaknesses as opposed to ignoring them.  If you make a mistake on a question, it is because of a weakness within you. If you do not address that weakness it will follow you to the exam. I learned this lesson when studying for standardized exams. I was able to legally buy 30 old exams and thought the best approach to studying for the exam was to do as many old problems as possible. But as I completed each exam I kept getting the same score  (+/- 5%) over and over. I had plateaued! But then I made a tiny tweak and my scores kept going up. Specifically, after each old exam, I would identify my weaknesses that led to each wrong answer, prioritize the weaknesses according to the degree to which they affected my score, and would address them in that order.  When I did that, my scores increased steadily all the way to the highest possible percentile (99%). I later realized that such standardized tests are designed to provide consistent scores (if the student does not study in between the subsequent exams to address their weaknesses). In fact that is one of the statistical measures used to measure the quality  of a standardized exam and it’s called “Reliability”  (Google for “psychometric reliability” to see what I’m talking about).