When it comes to notes, I'm usually a bullet-pointer. It's easy and effective for me, and I highlight stuff that is important. It may not be pretty (in fact, it's not pretty at all), but it works. It, however, isn't that great for math notes.

The first math teacher I had (last semester) gave us the tip of numbering our note pages, but since his teaching style was so disorganized it didn't help much. I've taken that advice into account this time, and researched a few ways to write notes, but found something that blended my bullet-point style with math.

First, set aside a few pages to create a Table of Contents.
This will help you later when you are studying and are trying to figure out what the heck you are supposed to study without flipping through a million pages.

Formulas on the left, Table of Contents on the right. I had screwed up the order but it still works.

I update this page with important page info, like Chapter Titles and the pages they are on, or where something specific is. It's an ongoing list! If you end up not using a few pages, tear them out for scratch paper later.

Next, set aside a few pages for Formulas and other important notes.
I write down all the formulas I encounter on these pages and what they are for. I then mark "Formulas" on the Table of Contents as the first few pages, with Formulas being the first page.

I keep a list of Formulas for easy reference at the front of my notebook!

I also have a page where I marked perfect squares and cubes, like an easy reference guide you see on the back of Pee Chees.

I bold and highlight each Chapter and Section.
I also mark them in the table of contents.

Left hand side has the work, right hand side has the explanation with important bits highlighted. Note the page numbers at the top!

Even though I note them in Table of Contents, if I am flipping through the notes, the Chapter and Sections will catch my eye. It also helps them stand out from the rest of my scribble-scrabble.
 
I write down definitions under the Chapter and Sections.
We are never quizzed on them, but it helps to know what is what. I don't usually mark these in the Table of Contents.

My previous teacher quizzed us on definitions, so now I'm a bit paranoid about knowing them. I note them and read them over, which actually does help with figuring out examples.

When showing examples, I do the work on one side and explain what I am doing step by step on the other.
Even if I always remember the order of operations, or to FOIL, or whatever, I always spell it out because I know when I go back to these notes later, I'm going to spend forever trying to figure out what I did where. This will save me time when I am reviewing before a test.

Here's the basic template without my messy handwriting! I don't color-code my notes like this, but you can if you want to.

The book doesn't do a good job in explaining each step. I think it assumes that I understand what its talking about, which can hinder my progress because 1) half the stuff they talk about is from Beginning Algebra which I took in 2002, which I don't remember much of, and 2) they over explain some steps and don't explain others at all.

"Dumbing it down" in notes may seem a little extra, but during review time, as I said, it's a life-saver!

That's it!
As you can see, this is rather utilitarian. There's no fancy colors or zentangles or coding system (all those colors will make my ADD mind go nuts anyway). Just the facts and explanations in an easy to find format. The only other way I think to make my notes better would have been to do them on graph paper. However, since I put all my classes in one notebook so I wouldn't lose any of them like I did last semester, I have to do with plain lined paper.

How do you organize your class notes? Are there any tips or tricks that you use that I haven't mentioned here?

Okay. Backstory. Me and math? Not friends. It's a long history that starts in the 2nd grade and I still would rather be doodling in my notebook than worrying about math. Public school pushed me all the way through to Trig and I don't know how because I don't remember half of what I was "taught."

If it were up to me, I wouldn't take a math class ever again. But I need to get through Statistics for Social Sciences for my major, and to do that I need to pass Intermediate Algebra. I did take this class before, but since I did that before the dinosaurs roamed the earth apparently, I need to take it again.

Yeah.

Last semester I tried, the teacher was...whatever. This semester the new teacher seems able to teach to the most math-inept of us all, (read: me). As I type this I'm awaiting the results of our first math test that I actually feel like I did good on, which is weird for me. But before the test, teach asked us if we had any questions.

I had one. I had a big one. It was an equation I had struggled with for two nights. I tried to figure it out and for some reason my brain couldn't wrap itself around it. I'm going to type this equation for you, and you are allowed to laugh if you get it (but only if I am allowed to laugh when you can't remember the definition to a $5 word from 11th grade, only fair). Ok, ready for it?

(x-y)²+3(x-y)-10

Yeah. I tried to factor it. Because that's what you're supposed to do, right? That was the instructions. I tried to group, rearrange, split, multiply out the (x-2)², EVERYTHING. I even tried plugging it into MathPapa and a few other engines to no avail. None of the answers I got matched what was in the back of the book.

See, for all you people who are "math smart", this is where us other people get tripped up. This is the "language barrier" or whatever. Don't think as it as in I can't do math. Think of it as in I am not fluent in this language. Keep laughing. Whatever.

So I shoot my hand up and was like, "Yeah, I got a question! Tell me how the heck you get the answer for this!" I then proceeded to lay down the equation as if it were the D.B. Cooper mystery. Surely this was a trick question and the answer in the back of the book was a typo. It had to be.

The teacher, bless his teacherly heart, writes it up there on the board and goes, "Instead of x-y, just substitute the x-y for another letter, like w."

He writes it out like this:

w²+3w-10

And then:

(w+5)(w-2)

And then he goes, "Just put the x-y back in where the w is."

And just like that:
(x-y+5)(x-y-2)

Ta-freakin-da.


Like I just couldn't. I couldn't handle it. The possibility of feeling stupid had no chance to sink in with how blown my mind was. It was like a whole new world opened up. One of the biggest OMG moments of my college experience and I swear I will never forget this stupid equation as long as I live.

It wasn't that I couldn't do the math, it was that I just didn't know you could do that. If you're thinking, well, that's a basic concept of Algebra, to substitute one thing for another, well...now you know where sometimes teaching fails. The importance of concepts get swapped for right answers and points on a piece of paper. I should have known this. But I didn't.

However, there is a point to all this. It doesn't have to do with an answer that is literally right in front of your face or accepting yourself as you are or whatever other platitude of the day that passes your FB or Insta feeds. It doesn't even have to do with if I will ever use (x-y)²+3(x-y)-10 in my life (I probably won't, who knows).

The teacher didn't do anything truly different than what the book said to do, but the book (wh

I think this has to do with the ability to teach and the frustration we get when we think something can be so simple but is so complex to others. Empathy can help you to understand that not everyone thinks the same way. I definitely want to be a teacher and I have to keep in mind that what may seem so easy to me may not be easy to others, and there are ways I'm going to have to articulate my process for others to understand. That doesn't make that other person stupid or me condescending (it would be if I treated them as they were stupid). Just as we expect students to learn we must also be willing to teach to them.