get into them, I need to disclaim something. I do not do these things perfectly. I do not take notes the same way every time I go to lecture, Sometimes I'm great at writing notes, and sometimes I don't even write notes at all. It kind of depends on where my brain is at that day. And I've had to learn to be okay with that. So now that that long intro is out of the way, let's actually get into the systems that I have developed and use on kind of an alternating basis. The first way that I take notes is something that I call scratch notes. Scratch notes is a system where you take whatever note--taking supplies you have, I personally use an ipad, Pro 11. and just write down any and all information from the lecture that you found important, useful or helpful to remembering what the lecture was about. This can be words, numbers, drawings, pictures, whatever it is that you find useful after lecture is over either right after class. Or usually I wait until the evening, I take out my scratch notes and any other supplemental materials, such as the lecture slides, textbooks, whatever article we're reading, and I rewrite the lecture in my own words, from the notes that I took by rewriting the lecture in your own words, you're making sure that you're actually processing and understanding the material. It's what one of my professors here at Berkeley like to call synthesizing your own knowledge understanding. if you can take something that somebody else has told you and reiterate it in your own words. That's a pretty good indicator that you actually learned something. You can wrap your brain around it, you understand it, and you'll be able to recall it from your long--term memory for something like an exam or a paper. I also think that this system is really great for setting yourself up for future success because it essentially creates a study guide for you throughout the semester. So rather than receiving a study guide from your professor, a week before the exam and spending that one week cramming all of your studying into that study guide, you already have one that you've been developing that you've been revisiting and revising throughout the semester Now, I should say that this is the system that I use the most back when I was in community college. And my course evaluations depended more on exams than papers like they do now that I'm at Berkeley. So I find this one to be really useful for memorization for exams. And I think kind of anything that being a lower division course where you're really building that foundational knowledge, and you need to memorize certain terms, keywords and concepts that you're going to build on later in upper division courses. So now that I am at Berkeley, and now that I am in upper division courses, let's take a look at some of the other systems that I use. Now before I get into this next section, I should say that the next two techniques are going to This video discusses note-taking strategies for college students with ADHD. The YouTuber, a UC Berkeley anthropology student, shares three methods: 1) "Scratch notes"—jotting down information then rewriting it in their own words; 2) Using an iPad to handwrite notes while simultaneously audio recording the lecture; and 3) Annotating downloaded lecture slides while recording the lecture. The key takeaway is that consistency isn't crucial; the best system is whatever works in the moment, acknowledging the inherent inconsistencies of ADHD. some kind of technology, Whether it's your phone's voice recorder, your ipads recorder, a separate voice recorder device, anything that you can use to record audio. This is because as somebody with ADHD, it takes me longer to process auditory information than other people. So I use my ipads recording abilities in conjunction with the note-taking app notability because I can record the lecture as the professor is giving it and it tracks where you're writing at any given point in time of the audio recording, if that makes sense. So it records the audio and connects it to what you're writing really. The only difference between this and the sketch note taking method is the audio recording. if I'm being completely honest in community college, I found it a lot easier to keep up with the lectures, what the professor was saying, meaning that I had an easier time keeping up with my note taking. But something about upper division course work just makes it a little bit harder for me to process that information quickly. So, I record my lectures so that during the revision process, I can go back and listen to the audio recording and fill in my notes in any places that I was clearly, uh, not keeping up. Also, a side note, I hand write all of my notes. I do this because I do not retain anything if I type them. And there's also something about handwriting, my notes, that makes it have like a physicality to it, that typed documents don't have for me. So, writing things out by hand, form stronger connections in my brain. So that's one of the reasons why I love having an ipad and an Apple pencil, because I can hand write my notes, but they are still digital, meaning I can access my notes from any platform and handwritten notes on things like notability and good notes are actually searchable. It's a great option for people who love handwriting their notes, but also want the perks of technology. And I think it's great for ADHD people. anyways, back to what I was saying, I also find using audio recordings really helpful for staying present during lecture. It helps me s audio recor