I am an undergraduate student. During the lectures the professors simply keep talking and at times write some stuff on the board. I am not sure when and what to write in my book. I am asking because I am facing two troubles: 1. unhelpful peers 2. dull teachers.
So how do you take lecture notes?
The first question to consider is what you want the notes for.
Situation A: to improve listening comprehension
If you just want to take notes to help yourself listen better (which is what I do), then it's not a big deal what you actually write down, but you should practice scribbling fast while listening. You could practice on (relevant) YouTube videos for a little while, which has the added bonus of showing you the material twice (so you're better prepared when you actually get to class).
Situation B: to use as study material
If you want to take notes that you can use to refer to later, it depends more on what you're studying. In general, though, here are some tips:
it helps to read whatever material your professor gave you ahead of time (videos, textbook chapters, their own notes...) so you have some idea of the structure beforehand, which helps you know what's important and what's not.
There are several different"note-taking systems" floating around online, like the Cornell method and the Mapping method, that you might find helpful (personally, I find it slows me down, but I know people who swear by structured note-taking). I'd recommend doing a bit of research to see if it might help you stay organized and keep things legible.
You should also work out some shorthand that works for you (stuff like -> for "implies", ^ for "is a subsection of"... Whatever works in your field). These are great, but you do have to develop them yourself so they make enough sense; otherwise when you come back at the end of the semester, you won't know what you wrote.
The other thing that I find works for me is having a color-changing pen so I can use color changes to easily denote subject changes, but that's more personal and probably a holdover from my 20-color notes in secondary school.
(Can someone help format this for me? I'm on mobile and I keep messing it up.)
