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by taopai 864 days ago
I agree with you.

It's great to put your notes in latex. But that's just final polishing. It's just a medium.

I am not a genius, in fact I am pretty dumb, but I studied with geniuses. The more geniuses they where, the less things they wrote in class.

One of them, the extreme case, completed the 5 years Math and Physics combined undergrad IN ONLY 3 YEARS.

He just wrote 4 or 6 sentences in a white sheet for class, except when doing calculations, but he didn't do that much in class. Some sentences were facts others were questions. He seemed uninterested but I think he was doing heavy lifting in his head relating what he saw with what he knew. When you asked something to him he used to say "Yes this is not new, it's just a variation, combination or example of this".

If I were to do college again I would spend a lot of time reading the texts (more than one for comparing important topics), then go to class to listen and solve doubts and spend time solving problems (interleaving topics) and making active recall with spaced repetition.

Only after the exam I will put effort to try to sum up what I learned In a well rounded Latex small book. For sharing and for revising it later on, in case of need.

1 comments

Anectodically speaking, it has always been extremely helpful not only reading texts and solving problems/exercises, but also: 1) repeating topics out loud and, if there were some formulas, writing them down while doing that 2) explaining something to your friend if they didn't understand it