Somehow, I realized that I had not had any form of entertainment since the start of midterms about six weeks ago. My brain has been swimming circles around Laplace Transforms and Fatigue Limits all thanks to my beautiful Mechanical Engineering…
4 Ways I Prep Myself for my Late Night Online Classes
In my very first blog post, I wrote about the difficult aspect of doing my virtual exchange, which is that I experience a whole 12-hour time difference from Perth, Australia. I thought that this week, I would dive in a…
My current favourite shows on Netflix
Netflix shows are great for passing time, but they can also be good for way more than that. Some Netflix shows have taught me valuable life lessons or helped me master a language that I’d been trying to learn. For…
Logging My Reading Week
For this Reading Week, I challenged myself to keep a daily log to see what worked in keeping me productive and what didn't. Here it is: Thursday My Reading Week officially begins after I submit an assignment and head home.…
Let’s pitch a TV show about U of T!
Like most of my friends and the people I follow on Twitter, I’ve been rewatching Gossip Girl on Netflix. It’s just as ridiculous as I remember it was, but what I find even more ridiculous is that all of the…
My suggested novels and shows for the break!
It’s finally here! Our holiday break! Now that classes are over and it’s officially too cold to go outside without hoping to immediately find a way back in, we’ve got about 3 weeks of staying indoors and binging Netflix or…
(Comic)ally Good Notes
Computer. Tablet. Notebook. Photographic memory.
Regardless of how you do it, we all take notes in some way or another. Some of us may take notes a little less frequently than we should, while others take notes with the frantic detail of a court stenographer. Personal note-taking preferences seem to depend on a couple things: how much of the course is based upon lecture material, how much sleep you got the night before, how neat your handwriting is and if you charged your laptop today.
Taking notes are a huge part of attending lecture and the quality of your notes can sometimes determine how well you will do in a course. The goal is finding that perfect balance between understanding most of the course material as it’s taught and jotting the most pertinent information down before your brain moves onto the next genius thing your prof says. Unfortunately, not all of us are lucky enough to have found that balance. Here are some of the types of note-takers you might know.
The Doodler
This sort of note-taker is miraculously talented enough to somehow ‘doodle’ penciled creations you couldn’t dream of and write down all of the prof’s main points. Which, now that you think about it, are really all you needed anyways. You squint to see what you thought was a doodle of a dog, only to realize this guy has done his own rendition of the Mona Lisa. Inspired, you attempt to make a doodle of your own.
...No. Scratch that. Handwritten notes in cursive are about as creative as your margins are going to get.
Pros: The Doodler’s notes are one of two things: Heartbreakingly hipster or total pinterest aesthetic.
Cons: In the time they spent doodling, you applied to four summer jobs. #$$$
YOLO, CR/NCR, and other abbreviations
YOLO: You Only Live Once* CR/NCR: Credit/No-Credit Students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are allowed to use up to 2.0 full course equivalents of CR/NCR status on coursework. That means that, on your transcript, instead of a grade appearing, you…