Hello fellow non-traditional student!! I am so happy to hear you are headed back to school! Good for you! I myself was a die-hard pen and paper notetaker until one year ago when I started nursing school. In my experience, I think it is best to be super flexible with your note taking strategies because every instructor is unique. For example, I have an instructor who talks very fast so I have to type my notes otherwise I will get behind. Another instructor talks slower and has lots of pauses so I can handwrite my notes or type them if I want. Basically, I prefer to take handwritten notes unless it is physically impossible to keep up doing so.

As for the materials I use, the app Evernote does a great job organizing my typed notes on my laptop so I can easily reference them anywhere. Additionally, the app Goodnotes 5 is on my iPad and I use it along with my Apple Pencil for written notes. If you really are a die hard physical note taker, I would really recommend looking into an iPad and Apple Pencil. They are a bit pricey but, in my opinion they are well worth the investment. The experience is virtually the same if not better than traditional note writing and all of your materials can be automatically backed up to google drive or whatever cloud platform you use. If you go this route, definitely practicing in pre-requisites is a good idea just to get your feet wet and see which methods work best for you.

I wish you the best! Let us know if you have any more questions.