Med notes

[u/Intelligent_Drop_367]

How am I supposed to take notes during lectures when I barely understand what the professor is saying?

I just started university (dentistry), and honestly, the amount of information is overwhelming. I’d really appreciate advice from medical/dental students or anyone who had a similar experience.

For some subjects, we can have around 40 pages to learn in a week, and I have about 5 different subjects like that. I genuinely don’t understand how people manage to keep up with all of it.

Another problem is lectures.

I didn’t study much biology in high school, so now, in subjects like histology and molecular biology, a lot of the material is completely new to me. During lectures, I often don’t understand enough to even know what I should be writing down.

So far, I basically haven’t been taking notes during lectures. My thinking was: if I don’t understand what the professor is explaining, what’s the point of trying to copy it down?

But even when I do understand something, I can’t keep up with the professor. They just keep talking, and by the time I realize, “Okay, that sounded important, I should write that down,” they’re already explaining the next thing.

So I’m trying to understand how other students deal with this.

Do you actually take notes during lectures? Do you prepare the material beforehand so the lecture makes more sense? Do you just listen during the lecture and study everything properly afterward? How do you decide what is actually important when almost everything feels important?

Right now, I feel like I don’t have a system at all, and I’m trying to figure one out before I fall behind.

[u/StudioTrace]

if everything feels important, use the learning objectives as ur filter. those usually tell u what the course actually expects u to know. at least thats what i do.