so, historically, i’m not much for taking notes in class. it just doesn’t make sense to me. attempting to capture what is being said distracts me from listening to it, which makes it impossible for me to really think critically or ask questions, and i feel that this defeats the purpose. the only class where i took anything close to chronological notes was an excellent sex-discrimination and the constitution class, wherein the professor wrote all of the key points on the board as she discussed them, and did so in such an organized manner that the resulting noteset was an excellent study guide, and it did not take brainpower to transcribe them. this was an ideal arrangement for me in a law class, because the facts are rather important in that world, and so leaving class with nothing more than some geometrical pattern that used half of a pen’s worth of ink was usually a bad plan.

anyway, i eventually compromised by teaching myself to give up on writing down what was being said, and instead i write down the tangents that come to my mind during the lecture. this serves a dual purpose – it provides a record of things that i find certifiably thought-provoking (if they get me to write them down, i must have thought something!), and it allows me to dump potential distractions out of my brain as they arise so that they don’t compete for my attention. if i really get going, i can still drift off and miss things, but it’s not usually worse than regular drifts, so it’s worth it because at least it gives me something to show for my time away.
as a side note, this strategy has been explicitly championed by both marty and erik, which is possibly a sign of why i feel that i fit into this program.

but i digress.

the reason for this post is actually because this morning, in erik’s class, i took more detailed notes than i normally do by far. it was mostly because we did a little round-robin on what we think about theory, and that means that i was in danger of spending energy thinking about what i was going to say and only shallowly listening to everyone else. so i tricked my brain into focusing by challenging it to come up with one or two sentence summaries of each point, and i wrote them all down to stay on task. as a bonus, it served as a good survey of the discussion, which was disjointed by nature, and i thought i would add them to the notes section of this blog that i’ve been playing with, so the whole business made me feel quite pleased with myself. since the wireless sucks in our classroom, i just disabled my connection and typed into notepad. disabling the wireless had the added benefit of ostensibly extending my battery life, which is good because i don’t sit near a plug, and i have been feeling like my battery runs down more quickly than it used to.

i think you can see where this is going.

ten minutes left of class, and i get a low battery warning. no problem, apart from the grumble because that means it only lasted 1.5 hours on a full charge without the wireless enabled, which is pisspoor compared to what it got in its younger days. i have confidence, however, in two things: i will get another warning (“critical” battery, instead of just “low”), and the computer will elect to hibernate when it gets down to the wire. i decide to see how long it takes, kind of like testing out how much gas you really have after the light comes on. i don’t even save my notepad file.

2 minutes left and the computer clicks off. no second warning. no sign of hibernation. i curse silently, and pay less attention to erik’s wrapup than i probably should. i comfort myself by saying that maybe it really did hibernate after all, and by laughing at my folly. i decide that i don’t regret using notepad over word even though auto-recover would have saved the day, because the fact that i’m supposed to see auto-recover as some kind of undeserved superhero that has the grace to smile upon me pisses me off to no end.

needless to say, the computer did not hibernate. it shows no signs of knowing that my notes existed. genius gets so little respect these days… ;)

i resolve to save my notepad files more often, even when they’re temporary, and/or to just be bolder about admitting that i like paper for notetaking (a position which i had specifically forced myself to reconsider today because of the intention of cutting and pasting later).
and i resolve to let IU order me a new battery for their/my computer.

i should try and summarize the general thrust of the discussion on my notes page, just for kicks, but right now i need to go find some dinner.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 9:16 pm and is filed under introspection, ranting, things i do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.