Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for November 16, 2021

Well those stinky booger brained boys took notes and they’ll get better marks on the test.

“He who fails to prepare must prepare to fail”, as the old saying goes Danae.

Notes? Notes! Why do you think that I would take note?

Yes, there is always a catch. Particularly if something seems to be too good to be true.

I used to take as many notes as I was able to. That’s why I was kicked out of band.

Something about experience being the best teacher if you live.

I thought a pop quiz had something to do with colas and root beer…boy was I wrong!

Personally I find that there’s always a catch 22.

A Pop Quiz could be over something new – something just covered – even that very day – so pay attention.

I would have thought that a pop quiz would be against her religious belief or violated her religious rights, or both. Judging by her previous outbursts at school.

I thought a pop quiz was taking the Pepsi challenge. You just had to tell which was Coke or Pepsi

I was about halfway through high school before I figured out how that worked. I found that if I spent about 15 minutes going over what I learned that day in school, I didn’t even have to study for tests.

“Notes… I don’t need no steenkin’ notes.”

“You have perfect recall of everything the teacher said?”

“No, I don’t want to remember anything the teacher said.”

“Donald, you’ll never grow up to be President with an attitude like that.”

My trouble was trying to read my own writing later.

But the teachers never read my notes, and make the quizzes about other stuff.

Reminds me of the old story:

Kid goes to class and sees note on the blackboard:

Take out a sheet of paper and answer these 3 questions:

1) What is the name of the most listened to genre of music?

2) What is the alternative name for soda?

3) What is another name for your father?

Kid says “Boy, I hate these pop quizzes”.

Every time I try taking notes I get the part I noted but totally miss the part that was going on while I was writing notes. I suppose the real trick is knowing what’s “noteworthy”.

When I was a kid in school, we were expected to remember the things the teacher was telling us, or the books we read. You know, internally, in our own brains, not on a piece of paper somewhere. Now, as confirmed by medical scanning, the part of the brain that gets activated when a question arises is not “Where is that information stored?”, it’s “How can I look that up?”. In a way, the Internet is kind of like a large auxiliary brain, with a hyper-efficient card catalog.

When I returned to college, 20yr hiatus, everything was PowerPoint, online and you could record the lecture in class. I just sat listening instead of writing down what COULD be important. Ended up w/100% on pop quizzes.Kids today . . .

Took a world history class in high school. The teacher said we wouldn’t have a book and that we could use our notes from class lectures on the tests which would be 100 True False questions. Some students did not do well on the tests, I don’t know why.

I found that the process of taking notes organized the information in my brain while I was doing it. I never had to consult the notes later until I got into college. I had a night job and would go to morning classes so woozy, my notes were the only recollection of the experience.

I found that in most classes if I took notes I missed more than I would get if I just listened carefully. (didn’t work for physics or cell biology)

You can bring a tape recorder like I did. Then you can sleep in class

2017???Okay,Wiley,get out of that hammock.

I started taking notes in high school just to make sure I listened instead of day dreaming or falling asleep. Later on, I would even take notes while reading text books just to keep my focus. I seldom looked at those notes again, but it did help me keep on topic. I was in grad school before I was diagnosed with nominal aphasia — a problem retrieving words, particularly nouns or names [I call it ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ syndrome]. Turns out that note taking and writing things down was key to compensating for this problem

The geometry teacher in my high school resented basketball season because games were played on Wednesday nights as well as on the weekends and would often throw pop quizzes on Thursdays after a game. You could tell there would be quiz because he wore all black. He would write the questions on the blackboard and they would be ‘impossibilities’. He would say, “Well, you all seem to feel these things are proven on your homework, so I assumed you knew something I didn’t!”

Cheat baby cheat, if that possible. If not take an F, then review you notes fool.

I rarely took notes. I could not write and listen at the same time so I mostly listened. I got pretty good grades on everything.

Like Aristotle told little Alex “There is no royal road to geometry.” Later Alex took the royal road to topology when he solved the Gordian knot.

I found paying attention in the class went a long way in filling in knowledge gaps.

Notes?

According to Danae, Notes are an infringement on her Freedom to Daydream while the teacher drones on about things of Zero Interest to Danae.

Freedom to Daydream is enshrined in the 1-7/8th Amendment to the Constitution.