Taking Notes:

Every semester, students ask for help taking notes, strategies for getting all the information down, usually mentioning that I “talk pretty fast.” It’s true—I do talk too fast sometimes, and I try to work on it. While I work on it, though, I do have some suggestions for more efficient note-taking in this class.

The first thing to recognize is that the outline of the lecture is on the class web page. Some students spend the lecture copying down the outline on screen, not realizing that it will be up for the rest of the semester. Ideally, though, many students would like to have the outline and then write their notes on the outline as we go along. In some cases, the lecture outline is already on the web site, but even in those cases where it isn’t, I sometimes have the lecture outline up at least the morning of the lecture, and often a day or two before, so you could print it out, bring it to class, and add your notes in the margins. Even if you can’t do that, you can always copy down the shape of the lecture outline, without all the writing (that is, copy the form but not the content), like this:

I.

     A.

     B.

          1.

          2.

          3.

II.

     A.

     B.

          1.

etc.

There. That only takes a few seconds, and you can fill in all the blanks later using the lecture outline on the web.

The important thing is to write down the essential points, not everything that your professor is saying (which is impossible anyway, especially for a fast talker like me!). That means your primary activity if listening to the lecture and occasionally noting down conclusions or particularly useful bits of information. When I see students writing frantically and constantly, I know they’re not absorbing the lecture—they’re transcribing it (this is part of the problem with using laptops—students write more but understand less). You should write something down once every minute or two, mostly as a reminder to yourself for later. Your notes might even look something like:

Voltaire=perfect Enlightenment gentleman (anti-authority, trouble w/ church)

Candide: satirical (anti-Church, anti-tradition), comic, turns on reader’s interest in sex

Problems w/ Candide: not really revolutionary, “cultivate your garden” ending seems weak, resigned.

Those are very brief notes for a 50 minute lecture, but they get at the heart of it. They should be supplemented with page numbers of the citations I read so you can find them later, as well as interesting things I say that seem like they could be useful for the paper. This has been confirmed by numerous studies—students with laptops, for example, write a lot more down, but understand less (even after studying those copious notes later!), and get worse grades on the exam.

There should also be some funny drawings of your professor, of course. I once had a philosophy professor who looked exactly (I really mean exactly) like Groucho Marx, which was more disturbing than funny at times. But I ended up with a lot of drawings of him. Your notes are not complete without a drawing of your professor (a drawing that, in the best spirit of the Enlightenment, should mercilessly make fun of him or her). Do they have a pet phrase they repeat all the time? Do they resemble an animal, however faintly? Big nose? Long neck? Penchant for overdressing? Just make sure they don’t see it.

Strategies:

We read a lot in this class—every semester, students wish we could slow down, look at the readings in more detail, read perhaps less but more deeply. So do I. But this isn’t that kind of class; especially early on in college, students need to take what are called “survey courses,” classes where you read lots and lots of little snippets of famous works (in history, sociology, etc.) trying to get a sense of what the whole field is like. We’re doing that with the last 4000 years of Western literature, so we have to read a lot, and read it fast. So what’s a student to do?

Two suggestions:  

One, look at the reading before we start a new section. Is there an unusually long book that you’re going to need to budget more time for? A brief short story that will give you some extra time to write the paper? Read a page or two: is this going to be dense and difficult (budget more time!), or light and breezy (now you can work on your chemistry lab…)?

Two, as you read, remember that we emphasize certain issues in class—and in your papers!—more than others. We’ve organized the class into large historical/stylistic movements (Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Early Modernity), so read looking for moments in the text that seem typically Medieval (or those that seem to be working against Medieval ideals). We’re also interested in what makes these authors unique, not just “examples of modernism,” so be on the lookout for what makes Sappho’s voice distinct, how Augustine creates a new kind of "subject," what’s Dantesque about Dante. In short, don’t get lost in the book, but read with a sense of a mission, and you’ll find your reading is easier. (Whenever you get the chance, though, it’s also nice to read just for the pleasure of reading…)

Citing:

Students often want to know how to cite the books and poems we’re reading in class. As a general rule in college literature classes, you don’t need to use footnotes, endnotes or a bibliography for short papers (longer papers, 10-12 pp. or more, do carry an expectation that there will be more formal citation). For the novels and short stories we’re reading, it’s perfectly fine to give the title (or a short version of the title), and a page number. For example,

In the Pococurante episode, Martin says, “there must be a pleasure in having no pleasure” (Candide, 78).

or

When Douglass writes that slaves will “take an ell” (Narrative, 36) when given an inch, he’s talking about more than a literal measure of distance—he’s also talking about the actual letter L.

You can do that because we’re all using the same edition of the same books. If you wanted to use a quote from another work, something that isn’t part of the class reading list, you’d need to give a more full citation (like this: Todd McGowan, The End of Dissatisfaction? (New York: SUNY University Press, 2004), p 238). But why would you do that? You only have 4-6 pages to make your argument, so you’re better off sticking to the texts you have to discuss, and discussing them in depth, rather than spending time on texts that you don’t have to discuss!

As for poems, it’s not very helpful to give page numbers, since many poems are shorter than a page. Here it’s best to give the title and the verse number, like (“Tintern Abbey,” v. 12), meaning that your citation comes from the verse or line number 12 of Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey.”