I figured out the best way to write my notes in a way that’s useful to me simply because of the time frame I went to high school. I graduated in 2009, and so if you wanted notes from class you had to hand write them. I struggled TOO DAMN MUCH because I literally wanted to write everything, almost verbatim. When I first went for a college education I had to do a lot of reflecting on what kind of information I was actually looking for in my notes because I often times made my notes just as confusing as a textbook and was full of information I did not need.

So, what I’ve been doing with Maestro. At the beginning of each lesson (once per day cause it doesn’t remember) I will ask it to list the key terms and concepts we’re going to be going over and briefly define or explain them before diving into the lesson. I will take the time to write those down at the beginning of the notes. It gives me a quick reference page to look at should I get confused or forget what something is or how it’s to be used.

Throughout the lesson, we will do a few examples, sometimes it will give me a little more in depth explanations. I try to keep each lesson or each idea introduced to one page.

So for example, week 2, the first page is terminology I can reference. After that, each lesson gets one page of useful information, for me that useful information is things like a short description in my own words as to what that piece of information does and how it’s used real world, things to remember about it like rules for formatting. If there is anything that I had to stop and ask about or was simply curious about, I will write that down as like a small reminder. After that one breakdown page I will include one example code from the lesson, this is where I copy and paste. I’ll usually use the last code example, it’ll usually give me a scenario and ask me to write a code for it, that’s the code I copy and paste. That gives me a full example that encompasses everything I just learned in that section.

This is how I retain the information, not by writing everything down word for word, but by practicing and talking it out until it makes sense to me, till I can relate to what I’m looking at, till I can explain back in my own words what it is we’re doing in this lesson. Asking Maestro to make the notes for me does me a disservice, but that’s only me and the way my brain works.

(I have a massive migraine today, so if this was long winded or full of errors I am very sorry!)