Digests and Compendiums by Julian

Digests and Compendiums by Julian - May 2016 Scholarship Essay

During high school and my undergraduate studies, I started performing the technique of making summaries. I used to go to college with my laptop and took notes of classes directly into a Word file, instead of on paper.
Then, once I got home, I immediately compiled and gave those class notes an academic format; and then I joined them with summaries of the mandatory bibliography for each course. The “making of” this documents were always a first approach and review of the study topics.
I used to call them "digests" instead of "summaries", because they were not short documents, properly said. These digest include lecture notes, concepts of literature, quotations, summary tables, images, maps and diagrams.
Depending on the subject, often digests exceeded 200 pages; but the usefulness of having a single document with everything needed was unique.
Needless to say, these compendiums became very popular university among my classmates, as they were a synthesis of the entire course.
Then, once the classes ended, and with the compendium finished, I only sat down and read it several times, underlined it, made notes in the margin, and re read. This way of studying always made me get good results.
Now, beginning my graduate studies, I am planning to prepare final exams in the same way. It always was very useful, and is a way that I recommend to all students.