Taking notes you will actually use

Notes are for making later study easier, not for transcribing the lecture. The Cornell layout, plus an example bank.

Most lecture notes are never read again, because they are a wall of text that is harder to use than the textbook. Notes earn their keep when they become questions you can quiz yourself with and examples you can redo.

The Cornell layout

• Draw a line a third of the way from the left. Right column: notes during lecture. Left column: filled in after class with a question for each chunk of notes ("What is the derivative of ln x and why?").
• Bottom strip: a two-sentence summary of the lecture, written the same day.
• Reviewing means covering the right column and answering the left-column questions out loud. That is active recall, built into the page.

In a math or physics lecture

• Copy every worked example completely, including the setup words the instructor says out loud ("since the force is perpendicular, work is zero").
• Mark the moment you got lost with a big "?" and keep writing. Fill the gap from the textbook or Mathub notes that evening.
• Write formulas with the conditions they need: "only when a is constant" next to the kinematics equations.

The example bank

Keep one document per class with the cleanest version of every example type you have met: one limit by factoring, one related-rates problem, one free-body diagram with friction. Before an exam, this bank is worth more than the whole notebook. Mathub notes pages already have one worked example per section, and the scratchpad keeps your own.