How to Use Your Class Notes

By the time I finished studying for my college exams, my class notes looked like they’d been through clown school. They were multi-colored, outlined, and dressed up with scribbles.

When you use your notes to study for an exam, it’s not enough to read over them. You have to get a little more intimate with your notes before you can really know them. How do you do this?

Become active in the process of studying so that you tap into your different learning styles. Go through your notes and underline any theme you see (especially if you anticipate any essay questions). Then practice an answer by creating an outline of that essay.

Use highlighters to draw attention to terms that are likely to show up. If you want, you could use different colored highlighters for different sub-topics of your subject. For example, as you study for a history test, you may want to use one color for important people and all the terms (behaviors, acts, laws, etc.) that relate to them.

Here are a few more ways to use your notes before a test and tap into your learning styles:

• Read them aloud and record yourself. Then listen to the recording
• Draw pictures of every process
• Make outlines
• Create your own fill-in-the-blank practice test with the terms

By the time you are finished with your notes, they should be well-worn! You should go over them in a variety of ways and work them over until you know them backward and forward.