A middle school social studies teacher of mine gave me detention on numerous occasions because I refused to take notes in his class.
Partway into the year during parent-teacher conferences, where parents met with teachers to discuss their children’s performance in class, the issue was brought up.
“Pixelscript is having some difficulties in my class. He is not taking notes during lectures. I’ve given him detention several times.”
“Well that’s strange, it says on his report card that he has an A in the class.”
“Well, yes, he does extremely well on homework and tests, but you see, he doesn’t take notes…”
“…Are you kidding me?!”
The greatest irony of the situation was that on the few occasions he forced me to take notes, it lessened my comprehension, because focusing on writing in real time during the lecture actively harmed my understanding of the lecture. God forbid a student actually listens to what you have to say…
I think people learn differently. Most lectures I have to wait for the instructor to finish their slide or something and then begin copying notes. If they’re going really fast I don’t understand anything, at that point it’s just writing them down as fast as possible in order to study later instead of learning in class.
I had a similar experience with a high school biology teacher. I always took very scarce notes (just what i knew i needed to write down). She insisted we take thorough notes and later copy them over neatly into another notebook. I refused. Nevermind that my handwriting has always been abominable. She based some part of our final grade on turning in these copied over notes, and I consequently got a poor grade despite doing well on tests. I took great pleasure in telling her about my 5 on the AP test at the end of the year. (It was a national test, scored 1 to 5.)
A middle school social studies teacher of mine gave me detention on numerous occasions because I refused to take notes in his class.
Partway into the year during parent-teacher conferences, where parents met with teachers to discuss their children’s performance in class, the issue was brought up.
The greatest irony of the situation was that on the few occasions he forced me to take notes, it lessened my comprehension, because focusing on writing in real time during the lecture actively harmed my understanding of the lecture. God forbid a student actually listens to what you have to say…
I think people learn differently. Most lectures I have to wait for the instructor to finish their slide or something and then begin copying notes. If they’re going really fast I don’t understand anything, at that point it’s just writing them down as fast as possible in order to study later instead of learning in class.
I had a similar experience with a high school biology teacher. I always took very scarce notes (just what i knew i needed to write down). She insisted we take thorough notes and later copy them over neatly into another notebook. I refused. Nevermind that my handwriting has always been abominable. She based some part of our final grade on turning in these copied over notes, and I consequently got a poor grade despite doing well on tests. I took great pleasure in telling her about my 5 on the AP test at the end of the year. (It was a national test, scored 1 to 5.)