Never loosing page 2 again

I’ve become one of those people who constantly has their computer on their lap and for me that’s not a bad thing. It has not been difficult at all transitioning to paperless. It’s actually a relief. I no longer accidentally misplace page 2 of my notes from class, which is actually quite a hassle because I’d have pages 1,3 and 4– this was actually a problem a few time last semester and beginning of this one. Everything is neatly organized on my desktop with files like “EVST exam 2” and “Geo Final Notes.” At first I thought I couldn’t make the transition to paperless in Chemistry because it was the most helpful to print the power points and write on them. Then I realized I was a little too lazy to walk to a printer to print just one thing. Now instead I screenshot the PDF and paste it into a powerpoint and take notes on it that way. It’s an easy system and saves paper and time.

 

Studying has been a little bit of a challenge. I’m used to copying over the important parts of my notes onto a study guide using a bunch of pens, markers and highlighters. It was a little frustrating at first because my notes just seemed like pages and pages of black words with little meaning. Yes they were tabbed and organized well but I was difficult to study them. Then I discovered the power of bolding, underlining, and coloring my text. Now I have a nice system that makes studying more appealing and there’s some satisfaction looking at colors rather than just black and white. All the important terms get bolded and sometimes colored in red or blue and other key things are made green or something. Instead of pages of boring there are pages of color and figures which is easier to study and isn’t so tedious.

 

While it’s still an adjustment period of doing this, I’m already thinking that this will be a good way for me to take notes in my lecture based classes next semester. This challenge has decreases my paper consumption, which was the purpose of this, and made me conscious about how much paper we all use. In biology I can take 4 or 5 pages of notes a day on word. 5 pages times 100 students (from the participants listed under course on Moodle) is 500 sheets of paper a day, provided they only use one side though. Still 250 sheets time 3 classes a week times 15 weeks in the semester is a lot of paper– and this is just one class.