[jordigh]

I actually find all note-taking to be hugely distracting. If I really want to understand a lecture, I'd rather not be taking nay notes at all. Otherwise, when I'm taking notes, I'm just scrambling to get into paper what's being said or written and I can't spend any time trying to understand it. My goal is then to just write it down so I can re-read it at home and understand it.

That being said, I'm quite proficient in LaTeX and have taken notes in Emacs. I don't have that many more errors in LaTeX than I do in handwriting. Both are about equally distracting to me.

[blastbeat]

Do you talk about math lectures? Because during my university time I seldom met people, who understood a math lecture during that math lecture. Especially in advanced topics like category theory, algebraic theory, fractal geometry etc. Usually people understood topics and concepts for the first time long after the lectures, often not until after a second exposure in the next course. Also, in many courses you had to take notes, because the lecturer would use custom symbols and definitions. So I agree, taking notes can be distracting, but in most cases it should help your understanding, especially if you lack preliminaries.

[jordigh]

Yes, of course I mean mathematics. If the prof was following a text (which as you say, is seldom the case in graduate courses), I find it a lot easier to not take notes at all so I can get a rough understanding of what's going on, and to go by memory to read a text later to get the details.

But it's true that oftentimes the only place to get the material from is the lecture and I have to be chasing after the lecturer to get the notes down and later try to decipher them myself.