As I’ve been putting together the list of things I use to keep up with various topics, I realized that I haven’t mentioned one of the tools I use most often–a notebook system. Levenger sells it, calling it Circa, and I’ve bought all mine from them. They don’t make it, though–the manufacturer calls it Rollabind, and sells it for a bit less money than Levenger. The biggest difference between the two company’s offering is, I think, the paper they use to fill the notebook: Levenger sells very nice paper.

I like the fact that I can put letter-sized paper, junior-sized paper, 3 x 5 cards, and pretty much anything else in the notebook. I have the paper punches to put handouts or other reference pages in the notebooks along with the filler paper, and find the system makes it much easier for me to keep everything together.

What I haven’t figured out, yet, is whether I’m going to ultimately take notes in long-hand and transfer them to a computer file, or just keep typing in class. Once upon a time, transcribing my notes into typed form (yeah, that tells you how long ago this was) formed an important part of fixing information in my head. I don’t know whether that’s still the case, or not. More when I find out…

Categories: Grad School