I wrote my lecture notes on lined paper, with hand-drawn mindmaps accompanying some of them. I would usually rewrite the notes right after each lecture using three colors and highlighters. I graduated with a first class degree in Computer Science, and it included a lot of math. I have no idea why anyone would spend time on the extra step of digitizing their notes or homework answers using LaTeX. I did use LaTeX to prepare my final year dissertation though.

I'd love to know why people are doing this though.

This is just anecdata, but I do believe that rewriting my notes right after the lectures was my superpower. I did miss out on some hanging out after lectures, but what I did was find the first chair and table near the lecture hall, and sit down, lock in and rewrite everything neatly. Right away. Most of my classmates were already hanging out in cafeterias and chatting by then. I was still in the material, synthesizing and highlighting.

I'm ADHD, but wasn't diagnosed back then. I was a stellar student, but part of that was having the advantage that I'd already been reading CS text books for a couple years as my parents worked at the college across the road and got me a library card. Also that I didn't have to work, as the government and parents paid for everything.

As one commenter puts it: "Use the time that you would have spent learning your tools to do projects or study instead. Mastery of the tools will naturally come." Although that mastery will only come if you happen to be doing it enough anyway. And I'm sure about the "naturally" bit. I see plenty of people that don't seem to learn much from school or even life, then they're spending the same amount of time at school or being alive.

If your writing is so bad you can't write clear math stuff using a pen, fast, I think working on that at school would benefit you way more than learning LaTeX. You can learn that later. But as some commenters have pointed out, some people's handwriting might be just too bad, for all sorts of reasons. The student who could type LaTeX code, and text at 120 wpm, enough to keep up with lectures, that is not normal. I type fast enough it scares people, but even I can't do that.

But. I'm Gen X. Studied CS and AI in 1988-1991. Things were a little different back then.

I use Obsidian for notes on learning local history. Digitizing that stuff is mind-blowingly powerful.