The Notorious Note-Taker by Samuel

The Notorious Note-Taker by Samuel - January 2022 Scholarship Essay

At the start of eighth grade, my passion for learning could not be contained, and I always was eager to learn. Every day after school I would go home and read the notes over and over again to cement them in my brain. Note-taking is an active way to recall information, and this is why. It keeps me awake. Taking notes keeps my body active and engaged, preventing feelings of tiredness or distraction. It stimulates my thoughts. Listening intently and making decisions about what to include in notes keeps my mind engaged in what I’m hearing. Information is emphasized and organized. I pick on and underline the essential concepts I hear while taking notes, determining the structure of a class presentation. It's also easy to connect classroom learning to textbook readings with such well-organized notes. Lastly, it makes a compact record that can be studied. Each class session provides me with a collection of short, well-organized notes that I use for study, learning, and other purposes. These are my explanations for why notes are important.
As my junior year began, I knew being virtual for Covid would have its pros and cons. Pros included being protected from Covid at home, and the cons were getting distracted, falling asleep, and not taking notes proactively. I took four AP classes (English Language and Composition, Biology, Statistics, and United States History), and I could not let disturbances get in my education path at home. The SAT also loomed in the distance after my AP exams, so I was in for a busy academic life, and I loved it.
When I would log onto Zoom or Google Meet, some teachers would post the notes for the day, and I would print them out. Then, as the color-loving nerd I am, I gather all my color pens, highlighters, etc… and commence taking notes. Listen, write, process, question, repeat; this was my five-step mantra during the school year. In APUSH, traditional Cornell notes are given, statistics and biology, just slides, self note-taking. In English however, there were only AP daily videos provided by College Board for notes (these videos were also provided for my other subjects too). I watch a video a day for each unit and take notes from the videos. I write everything in a five-subject notebook, one for each AP class, and the last for SAT. By the end of the year, the entire notebook was jammed and packed with a year’s worth of notes. I even displayed it in my room as a trophy of hard work and dedication.
My junior year of high school showed off my note-taking skills and exemplified how much success can be attained. Note-taking is such a useful, important skill for students, even extending to college and beyond. This portrayed something in me that I didn’t even know; I mastered the art of note-taking and maximized the strength of this learning technique. In all, note-taking was the skill I intensely made stronger during my 2020-2021 school year.