Note-Taking Procedures For People With Less than 2KB Memory

Okay, I admit, as a child I lost consistently at the Memory game (you know, the one where you turned over cards on the floor, and tried to remember the stupid positions to get matching cards?) and I have never recovered from the trauma. My memory never recovered, either.

So when Dr. James (our fearless leader) required us to write in our reports what we did, where our mistakes were, etc., I realised: I am going to have to write everything down. Good grief. I don't even have that much ink. During the first weeks, my reports were general, and my Team 4: Week 1 Report could have used much more meat. I spent SIX hours scrounging the search engines, but unless you're a mind reader, you'd never know. So here are a few procedures that worked for me in later reports (grade, grade, where is thy sting?).

1. Use folder paper.

*It has margins where you can write codes by your notes.

2. Write out a list of abbreviations that you will use on the top of your note page.

*It's easy to forget what a string of letters can mean. Sometimes I had written down so many codes in the margins, and blanked out on the meaning. It looked like a really bad alphabet.

3. Draw a dividing line between each subtask's notes and label each subtask division.

4. FEFP (Fossilized Error Faux Pas)

*Seriously, it is a stress reliever to say this at the terminal, with a lot of air--it sounds like a fowl swear word (okay, I know, bad pun, but it does sound like a chicken noise a little...)

5. RLFP (Repeated Lapse Faux Pas) or RL (Repeated Lapse)

6. CS (Computer Screen)

*This indicates what the computer prompted. It helps when writing down messages/instructions/rejected commands. You can go to Dr. James and he can decipher what "a News NNTP error occurred. WWW NNTP server can't talk to you. Goodbye." means. Hey, shows you tried, even if you failed.