2017 EDC: Bullet Journal, Roterfaden, Hobonichi, Traveler’s Notebook…

 

Happy 2017!

This post took longer than I planned but I wanted to start the first post of the new year with how my stationery “everyday carry” items evolved since when I started this blog last year.

1. Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter A4

Last year, I had a post about custom A4 Roterfaden. The brown cover with grey suede inside material ended up going to my husband, and I decided to stick with an original size A4 (which wasn’t as big as I thought it was once I got used to it) with a black leather cover and “magnolia” felt inside. Main reason for the switch was weight. With A6 or A5, it probably wouldn’t add much, but the A4 size was significantly heavier for me when it has suede material inside compared to the one with wool felt.

2. Bullet Journal

My bullet journal is still going strong. I am thoroughly enjoying its flexibility and comprehensive coverage of all my needs. I upgraded the notebook to Stalogy 365 Notebook. It’s not exactly tomoe river paper but almost as thin. Supposedly it has 365 pages but its thickness is not even 15mm! You can see the notebook in the picture above — the black B6-size notebook just under Hobonichi Techo. I didn’t want to keep changing the journal too often, since I keep a lot of valuable notes that should be useful for a long time.

Very simple monthly view.

Daily notes and tasks. This is what I love the most about bullet journaling — flexibility. There is no confinement of the space; you write as much or as little as you need to according to each day’s needs. And I love how i can just jot down notes (even lengthy notes) without having to pull out a separate notebook.

3. Hobonichi Techo

Ok, not too proud of this but I had made an impulse purchase of Hobonichi Techo late last year. I was really looking forward to the new year and was ready to put it to a good use. And then…

Bullet journal happened!  >_<

Now that I no longer needed a daily planner, I had to come up with an alternate purpose for it in order to make peace with blowing those precious 33 bucks. So here is the re-purposed Hobonichi:

Is it a sketch book? Is it an art journal? Who cares what it’s called. Basically, I made a commitment to draw something on it each day. (I picked my best ones for the photo shoot here… Many are just simple line sketches. ^^) And because there is nothing more than humans that I enjoy drawing, they’re filled with various faces and poses. Keeping up with this during the week on work days has been challenging. I mean, I practically live at the hospital and come home only to sleep. What makes it work is the realization that I “slack” diligently throughout the work day. Of course no one can work and study non-stop. Of course my days are scattered with “informal” break sessions of browsing the net, reading news, or sometimes staring into empty space… So, if an idea hits, or I come across an interesting photo in the news article, I make a quick sketch. It can be as quick as two minutes.

On weekends or whenever I am off work (as I am this week, woo-hoo!!), I do spend more time on this and love it. For example, the couple of pages shown above are my ink wash practice/experimentation. I had recently developed an (expensive) hobby of fountain pens which then led to inks… I never cared for watercolor paintings, but for some reason, I find ink washes unbelievably beautiful. Thank goodness for ink samples. Otherwise, there would be nothing left of my paycheck. So there they are, my interesting subject of the day, trying out whatever shades of ink that strike my fancy.

4. Traveler’s Notebook

When I first started the blog, I believe I mentioned how I purchased ZLYC leather covers from Amazon rather than going for the original and expensive Midori Traveler’s Notebook. They’re still very useful — the passport size is still doing a great job as my wallet. I decided to splurge on Midori Traveler’s Notebook because I wanted one in black leather and Goulet Pens had a great package deal. I don’t regret my decision; it is truly wonderful. Compared to the cheaper ZLYC brand, the finishing touch really makes a difference. The way the cover folds is different. Finish of the leather is different. If you’re only interested in the functionality, ZLYC is absolutely fine. If you care about the fine details of product design, then be prepared to pay for the superiority. The most obvious difference can be seen on the edge of the leather:

If you can see in the picture above, the edge of the brown leather below (ZLYC) remains as a rough cut piece. The black leather (Traveler’s Notebook) on top, on the other hand, has smoothed, finished edges.

Anyways, this new Traveler’s Notebook can be found in my bag everyday as a companion to the Hobonichi Techo. I have a pouch inside which contains a pencil, a few Copic Multiliner pens, and brush pens — my mobile art supply so I can fill those daily pages in Hobonichi Techo no matter where I am. I also keep a notebook insert with tomoe river paper for more random sketches, and a Field Notes pocket notebook to jot down any quotes or personal notes/journals.

 

I hope you enjoyed the overview and the pictures. I love the format of blogs for in-depth discussions but recently realized Instagram to be a more convenient platform for sharing pictures. For more pictures inside my Hobonichi and other random stuff, look for jottermeow!

 

~meow~

 

Practical Bullet-Journaling

When I saw the colorful pictures of “bullet journals” on social media, I thought it was a strange name for what I was seeing – where are the bullets? Only glancing at them, I mostly saw what appeared to be planner spreads except they were hand-drawn. How painstaking it must be!

Then, I read about the original idea of “bullet journal” by the creator, Ryder Carroll. (If you’ve never heard of this and curious about it, then go straight to the source.) As I watched his video talking about various “logs,” and “migrations,” I dismissed it, thinking it was too complicated to bother. On the other hand, I sensed that he was talking about something very similar to what I have already been doing all along; I use little squares for tasks, which get check-marks if done, and arrows if moved/postponed to the next weekly page. What he has done, in my opinion, is that he used common notations and methods, combined them, and developed a comprehensive and methodical organizational system.

As any avid bullet-journalers will tell you, the core of this method is its simplicity and adaptability. The colorful pictures all over the web are just one facet of its applications. As I thought about it more, I realized this could be way way better than my old weekly planner or my current Hobonichi. Maybe I won’t even need to carry a planner AND a notebook. Maybe I could truly have everything in one place!

I think the reason I ended up changing my planners so often in the last couple years when my life became busier than it’s ever been, is that none of the planners truly gave me what I needed – having everything in one single portable book. The traveler’s notebook and Roterfaden covers helped a lot, thanks to the ability to carry multiple notebooks in one place. Thinking about Ryder Carroll’s explanation of his system, I realized I was confined by the pre-conceived notion of what planners should be, and what notebooks should be. Who says I must keep appointments and tasks in one book, and school notes or meeting notes in another? With systematic but simple organization and indexing, I could have anything and everything in a single notebook.

So, let me share with you how I personalized the “bullet journal.”

The Notebook of Choice

I had recently ordered a notebook sampler from Goulet Pens from which you get 5 pocket-size notebooks and a great way to try out brands like Rhodia, Mnemosyne, Clairefontaine, etc. From the pack, I fell in love with the little Apica, with its butter smooth paper and the quaint design. And so I bought an Apica Premium in B5 size. Their Premium notebooks have 96 sheets which is about 1cm thick. I love the B5 size which gives you more room than A5 but not too big like A4. See the picture above to get a sense of the size in relation to the regular traveler’s notebook and my recently featured Roterfaden custom size (A4 minus one inch).

Year View

This could be analogous to the “future log.” For my job in a hospital, I need to see classes that I have to teach all day, conferences, vacation times, any major housewide events many months ahead. So, a year-at-a-glance feature was a must. I got the idea from Hobonichi planners which have vertical columns of months and you can see the entire year on a spread.

 

I have 3 months on a page which gives me enough space to put important events for specific day. I purposefully left a large space at the top so I can put my quarterly goals/priorities. I also like to indicate major projects and their duration using double arrow atop the months so I can get a sense of how my schedule would be like.

Month View

Similarly to the year view (or quarterly view rather) my monthly page is also a vertical column of dates with major events or deadlines written next to them. If I need to update future events, I put it here if it occurs in the current month. For future events farther ahead, then I go to my year view. Again, I have some space to list tasks/priorities for the month.

Daily Log

Once I embraced the freedom of the bullet journal, I am so struck by the beauty and utility of the system. I loved Hobonichi Cousin for its large daily pages, but nevertheless, I was confined by “one page per day” rule. With the bullet journal, the current day is limitless. For example, I started the Monday entry with a couple of tasks I had migrated from the previous day. As I was working on the second task item, which was an item related to my qualifying exam, I had to look up an experimental method. So I jot down a quick note on the method. I had more notes as the day went on, which is spilling over to the second page. Whenever I end up writing a sizable note on a particular subject, it will be indexed for easy reference. At the end of the day, I started the Tuesday entry and migrated any tasks that had to be done that day.

As for delineating each day, I originally just wrote the date and drew lines. Then I remembered a set of decorative tapes I had bought a long time ago one of which had all the days of the week (except weekends) and I could just tear off one at a time. How convenient! The blue color of the tape pieces really helps to distinguish each day so much more than my feeble lettering attempt.

My Thoughts So Far…

As much as I like sketching and various artistic pursuits, I have not been able to find much time for personal reflections or arts and crafts… I am keeping my bullet journal pretty much for its utilitarian purpose of carrying it around work and school. It requires hardly any supplies. I have a multi-color pen to distinguish work items from school items from personal items. (As far as I can remember, I have used blue ink for work.) I don’t even need a ruler for drawing lines thanks to the square grid. As for the portability, it’s been amazing now that I ditched separate notebooks from planner books. While Apica Premium is a thicker notebook than say, Moleskine Cashier, it is my planner, meeting notes, project notes, school notes, all in one. I still use Microsoft Outlook – it is essential since my organization uses it exclusively for scheduling meetings. But I am not fond of using Outlook for tasks and I hate its month view. Oh and you can’t even see more than a month at a time. I can’t imagine any digital solution in any foreseeable future that is better than pen and paper. Or, at least my brain finds comfort in pen and paper and I don’t think I can change that. And with the adaptability of the bullet journal system, hopefully I will no longer be in perpetual hunt for the “perfect” planner.

It’s been about a month doing this. So, we’ll see if it sticks.

 

~meow~

Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter A4 Custom

Finally a post about Roterfaden A4 size! Yay!

No one is paying me to say this, but Roterfaden is a terrific company and I thoroughly enjoyed the purchase process. I wish I lived in Europe so I can visit their store. But considering my options limited to browsing their online store and email communication, they have been very pleasant and accommodating.

I wanted a Taschenbegleiter in A4 size so that I can carry larger notebooks and print-outs all in one place, but the product dimension is a lot larger than necessary for standard US letter size materials. (A4 paper is slightly longer and narrower than US letter size.) Micha from Roterfaden promptly responded to my inquiry about making one with a shorter length. With his kind help, I ordered one with dark brown leather on the outside, dark grey suede for the inside, 3 clips, with a dimension of 23.5 x 29.5 cm (that’s about 1 inch shorter in length than their standard A4 cover.)

Having used the A5 size cover for a while, this felt very big and strange in my hand initially. In reality, however, this is no bulkier than a typical 3-ring binder, and more portable in my opinion because of its flexibility of the cover unlike the rigid plastic cover of the 3-ring binders. The leather’s bendable softness is more pronounced than what you would have noticed with A5 because of the larger surface.

Covers are soft and flexible.

Here are more pictures of the cover and how I am using it:

Inside of the front cover (Left) and a close-up view of the dark grey suede inner material (Right). The small pockets are perfect for business cards.

Sheet protectors and card protectors in the middle clip. (Card protectors are only available in A5 size.)

 

I have a folder for loose papers secured by the third clip. A large pocket in the back holds a notepad.

I used to carry multiple manila folders with miscellaneous loose papers, which would inevitably get misplaced here and there. Now I just shove everything in the taschenbegleiter, wrap the elastic around, and I am good to go!

After carrying this for a while, I do have one small regret: suede is heavier than wool felt. I don’t think this would make much difference for A5 size. But since A4 is considerably bigger, I notice the difference. While I like the look of the dark grey suede inside the cover, I would go with felt if you want to make your A4 cover as light as possible.

I hope this was helpful for anyone considering Roterfaden, especially in A4 size which must be ordered online since it’s not yet available in US.

Now I’ve reached a point where I am biting my nails with anxiety and guilt that I’ve spent too much on “luxury binder.” So, no more Roterfaden for me! (for a while…)

~meow~

 

Taking Notes in Field Notes

Do you use those little 3.5 x 5.5 inch notebooks? Love ’em or hate ’em? Are they your container for the fleeting but brilliant ideas? Or practical, mundane lists of things?

I’ve always adored those little things — so portable! But never utilized them to their full potential. The only time I’ve written to the very last page of a pocket notebook was for a house-hunting, jotting down details of each property. I have to say it isn’t a very fond memory. The idea of shopping around and deciding what to buy is stressful to me (so I usually end up not buying, which is a good thing overall…) Having to drive/walk around to buy something is even worse! We ended up with a very satisfactory house and I hope to not deal with real estate again for a long long time to come.

Back to the notebooks…

I rarely used those little ones because 1) I am not a list person, 2) I am not a poet, 3) I am not a sketch artist, 4) I think I can remember (and then never remember what it was that I thought I would remember).

Lately though, I feel like I can understand why some people constantly write. As I get older and my life gets more complicated with more things to keep track of, the things that floated around in my brain disappears so easily. There are many days that I know were impressive (I was crazy-busy or crazy-productive) but cannot remember why. Unless there is a hard, physical evidence, whatever that left an impression in my head might as well have never existed at all.

So, I just began jotting things down. I started carrying those notebooks in my bag, my pocket, in the car… I write it down when I hear a memorable podcast, when I have a conversation that I want to remember, when I make an appointment and can’t put it on my Outlook calendar right away…

As I began this new habit, I also learned the Field Notes company offers subscription service. The Field Notes intrigued me with its unassuming, yet distinctive design, and with the subscription service, I can get my hands on their non-traditional special edition notebooks. (Top photo featuring my first subscription box!) The best part? I don’t have to shop around!

Besides the incidental memos on the go, I’ve discovered another way to use these notebooks: projects!

Leuchtturm1917 A5 for long-term notes, and Field Notes for temporary notes and brainstorming

Their small size with only 48 pages makes it perfect for a short-term project with finite content. Today, I opened a new Field Notes memo book as I began reading a bunch of papers for a final exam. I already have an A5 size Leuchtturm1917 that I’ve been using for academic note-taking. But I consider that as a rather permanent location for long-term record-keeping. The little memo book, on the other hand, will contain ideas and information that I will need just to complete my write-up for this exam, and would not necessarily want to carry around with me afterwards. If I ever want to look up what I planned and what I did for this exam, it will still be there somewhere on my shelf.

As I complete more and more projects with my life, I will have records for them in a discrete manner. It appears that there are many avid collectors of Field Notes out there. I’ve seen beautiful photos of colorful collections. I don’t think I will ever become a serious collector (looking for rare editions, etc), but I am quite looking forward to the day when I will have stacks of well-used Field Notes.

~meow~

Roterfaden Wk-12

Roterfaden Wk-12 Leather Cover

In this post, I will tell you about a different Roterfaden product, Wk-12. But first, some background…

When I posted about Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter A5 along with various notebooks I was using in it, I really thought I found my perfect system. After a while though, I began to crave more space to write in my planner than Midori’s weekly insert can provide. So I jumped on the Hobonichi bandwagon and bought a “Cousin Spring,” which is the A5 version with April start (so, I didn’t feel as guilty about buying a new planner mid-year.) With it’s daily pages, I had all the space I could want! The yearly, monthly, and weekly views are great for planning. And then I use the daily pages for tasks, reminders, meeting notes, etc. It’s working as a planner and a notebook combined. It’s great!

But, here’s the problem: Carrying it around inside the Roterfaden A5 cover along with my other various crap made it too bulky. The solution? Roterfaden Wk-12 with a slimmer profile.

In wk-12, the leather material is quite different from the regular Roterfaden covers. Instead of the suede-like texture, its leather is shiny, and has wrinkled (?) texture. Probably the picture above tells it much better than I can describe… Also, instead of an elastic to keep the cover closed, wk-12 has two pen loops so that inserting a pen through them keeps it shut (see the picture at the top.)

The inside cover is made of dark gray suede with pocket configurations as you can see in this picture:

Inside pockets

The front cover pockets are perfect for keeping business cards and sticky notes. The back cover has one large pocket which I stuck the back cover of my Hobonichi as well as a thin notebook.

Wk-12 only comes with 2 clips, and so I used a rubber band around one of the clips to accommodate more inserts:

I have been using this set up for a month or so, and I quite like it. I have sheet protectors and business card protectors in the front (which are secured with rubber band around the clip), a Midori insert which I’m using as a personal journal, a Hobonichi cousin for work/school needs (without it, my life would fall apart), and an A5 notebook from Roterfaden for miscellaneous notes. (As an aside, this Roterfaden notebook is great in this setup. But I won’t be purchasing it again, as I find it too flimsy for general use.)

There’s something addictive about Roterfaden products. I love it so much that I ordered an A4 size, so that I can carry full size notebooks and print-outs. I believe it’s a combination of the ingenious clip mechanism — so simple yet so functional! — and the high quality but unpretentious design. Normally, an uncomfortable guilt overcomes me whenever I spend more than $100 on any product (doesn’t matter how well-justified, and doesn’t matter how much I earn), but spending on these Roterfaden products creates less guilt than usual. Could it be the fact that this is not some huge corporation, but a small business run by a few individuals who make products that actually go through their hands makes me feel like my purchase is more meaningful? Who knows…

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this review. More posts coming when I receive the A4 cover!

~meow~

Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter A5

I mentioned in my first post that I switched to Roterfaden after first getting acquainted with the traveler’s notebook. Both share the advantage of carrying multiple inserts/notebooks. While I love both systems, the Roterfaden is the one that would be found in my bag everywhere I go. Not only does it contain Midori weekly insert I used to have on my traveler’s notebook to keep me organized, it also carries my notebooks, allowing me to just grab this one thing and I have everything I need whether I am going to a meeting or to classes.

I purchased this beauty from Baum-kuchen, a beautiful online store that sells cute stationeries, personally-curated leather goods, and miscellaneous decorative items. It seems that Baum kuchen is one of the few US sellers that carry Roterfaden products at this point. The original Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter store in Germany offers a wide variety of personalization options and color/design combinations but production and shipping take a few weeks. I am not very patient in general, and the pre-made designs found in Baum-kuchen suit my needs just fine. I’ve purchased two Roterfaden covers — one regular, and the thinner Wk-12 model (the bottom one in the first picture), which I will post in more detail in the future. I will be discussing the regular, light brown A5 cover in this post:

The outside cover is made of suede leather and a tough, slightly-elastic fabric for the spine. Inside, there are pockets of varying sizes made of gray wool felt. It adds considerable thickness to the whole cover, but I came to like the stability it provides while still retaining some flexibility to mold its shape as needed.

I have a total of four notebooks inside — a weekly insert, two thin A5 notebooks, and one thicker A5 notebook. I played around with a few different set-ups and I believe I now have what works best:

#1: Midori Weekly insert

I simply removed this insert from the traveler’s notebook that I was using before and stuck it in here. As a planner, I prefer a horizontal weekly layout rather than vertical (Outlook calendar shows my exact hourly schedule vertically each day. My analog planner needs are slightly different…) I also love having the right side page blank so that I can jot down any notes during that week.

On the left side which is divided into seven days (Saturdays and Sundays get equal amount of space as any other day, yay!), I write important tasks and reminders for each day.

I’ve asked myself at some point, do I really need a paper planner when I have the Outlook to keep track of every hour of my day? Not that I am particularly a fan of Microsoft Outlook but it comes with the job. I tried using the task list functionality but just couldn’t stand it. Therefore, I need a paper planner and love it!

I am also re-using the Midori traveler’s notebook zipper pouch where I keep a few sticky notepads:

#2: Roterfaden dot-grid booklet

After the weekly insert and zipper pouch is a Roterfaden’s own insert — I chose dot-grid but they make variety of notebooks including ruled, grid, blank, sketchbook, etc. I like the design and the feel of the paper (fountain pen-friendly if you’re wondering). I don’t think I’ll be purchasing it again though. I have other favorites that are cheaper.

I use this little booklet for just jotting down random notes. I find it too small in capacity (20 sheets) to keep any long-term notes and so, prefer to use it for temporary purposes. The picture below shows Roterfaden insert on top of Muji notebooks. Both are advertised as A5 size but Roterfaden is a few milimeters smaller in dimension as you can see below:

#3: Muji grid notebook

My third item inside my Roterfaden cover is a Muji grid notebook which I got from Amazon — 5-pack 30-sheet notebooks. Very economical and paper quality is as good as Roterfaden and Leuchtturm in my novice opinion. For my note-taking habits, I find the size and the number of sheets just fine for a single class. My plan is to switch this out each semester. I can always add more if I need to keep notebooks for more than one class at a time.

A minor complaint I have for this notebook is that its cover is made of a very stiff paper. I like my notebook covers soft and pliable — I like the Roterfaden inserts in this regard. The stiff Muji cover means that I have to keep my left hand to press it down while I write on it. But again, it’s a very minor complaint and it’s so much more economical. I forget the exact price but the 5-pack Muji notebook (30-sheet) was still cheaper than the 3-pack Roterfaden notebooks (20-sheet).

As a side note, I used to carry manila folders to classes for printed reading materials and loose papers. No longer! The metal clips of the Roterfaden system let me to just stick them between my notebooks as you can see below, and they won’t fall out:

#4: Leuchtturm1917 grid notebook (soft cover)

I have a Moleskine soft cover notebook that I have been carrying around for several years where I kept all my notes relevant to my job as an oncology nurse. Whether I was reading up on something in our medical library or attend a conference or studying for my certification exam, it was all in a single notebook. I was very impressed how sturdy the “soft cover” turned out to be.

After I decided I like A5 size much better, I replaced Moleskine with Leuchtturm1917 out of curiosity. I’ve read that Moleskine papers are terrible for fountain pens but I wouldn’t know — I was not using fountain pens back then.

Anyways, now I have this A5 Leuchtturm1917 grid notebook as the fourth insert in my Roterfaden to serve the same function as the large Moleskine in the past. Unlike the other thin inserts, this is much thicker (>120 pages) and I mean to keep this same notebook for a long time. Therefore, the notes that go in here will be stuff that I’ll be referring to over and over again.

I am really loving this notebook for two reasons: page numbers and the content page in the beginning:

So far, I have written things like chemotherapy drugs, bone remodeling process, coagulation pathways… I find myself having to look these up more than once or twice, and keeping a semi-permanent notebook with an organized content list will be very useful.

 

Finally, the picture below shows you the back pocket with iPad mini:

It gets pretty heavy and thick with the tablet inside but I don’t carry the iPad all the time. When I do, however, the convenience of having everything I need at once is a huge advantage in my opinion.

So, this is how I use this Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter! (A great companion indeed!)

Feel free to ask me any questions regarding this product since I am sure there are things I’ve overlooked, and thank you for visiting!

~meow~

 

 

 

Traveler’s Notebook

I stepped into the world of the Traveler’s Notebooks only a few months ago and have since felt amazed by the loyal following and all the creative ways of using the medium. My introduction to this arena was a much cheaper ZLYC brand rather than the ever-popular Midori brand of the traveler’s notebooks but they’re very similar, as far as I can tell based on the numerous posts I’ve read online.

I am now relying more on my trusty Roterfaden for the organization purposes and note-taking, but I still use the regular size traveler’s notebook for my personal journal and record-keeping. It just stays home instead of following me to work and school. What does follow me everywhere, however, is the passport-size traveler’s notebook which functions as my wallet:

ZLYC sells a package of traveler’s notebook set which includes the regular size, a passport size, and a leather pen  case for around $40 on Amazon. I hear the leather quality is much better with Midori brand, but this suits my purpose just fine.

As you can see in the picture, I’ve made some modifications to the elastics. The original ZLYC notebooks’ elastics are very tight, and tend to squish the inserts inside. I’ve changed the elastics of the regular size notebook with a Midori brand elastic, which is thinner and more pliable. For the passport size, what you see in the picture is just one of my hair bands… just because it was right there and softer.

To re-purpose it as a wallet, I purchased a zipper case refill so that I can carry cash and credit cards:

 

And in the middle, I have a blank insert that came with the ZLYC package:

It’s pretty handy to have a notebook in your wallet, as I’ve come to find out. I jot down miscellaneous notes here — mostly definitions and tidbits from here and there. Whenever I am waiting in a line (like the Starbucks store in our hospital that always has a long line), I open this up and start reading. Of course we have our smartphones these days to ensure entertainment wherever we are, but this little notebook actually keeps me productive.

So, hooray for the multi-functionality of the traveler’s notebook!

I know my posts have been rather practical than artsy. If you’d like to see all the wonderful creative ways of using these little notebooks, just google traveler’s notebook and there are tons of blogs and Instagrams with beautiful pictures. I won’t link any since there are so many!

Wow, I’ve been very productive with this blog in the last couple of days. Since this is the end of my weekend, I probably won’t get much chance to write anything else in the next few weeks. My goal is to keep writing regularly though, hopefully at least twice a month. This has been a lot of fun and hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you!

~meow~

Evolution of Note-taking

Having returned to a classroom setting at an older age than a typical college student, I am often overcome with a terrible nostalgia for the days before PowerPoint.

In the nineties, I was a teenager on the assembly line of public education system of South Korea. Korean education is very Spartan and has a tendency of squashing any budding creativity and free thinking in favor of rote memorization and formulaic thinking. While I felt like suffocating in this kind of education, it does succeed in ensuring a decent level of literacy and math skills of average citizens. (It depresses me just thinking about the sorry state of public education of America, where educators are so afraid of “boring” the students. What’s wrong with sitting them down and make them do a hundred problems of arithmetics? Such practice eventually leads to some insight of how numbers work naturally. Common Core math attempts to achieve this insight didactically, and it’s a good try. But it will lead to nowhere unless practice follows. And too many teachers who are not so bright with math to begin with are screwing it all up because they themselves are not getting the purpose of the standard.)

I apologize for the digression… Back to the nineties when I was hating my life in a typical Korean school, memorizing and memorizing. Back then, students took notes like there was no tomorrow. It wasn’t just students either. Teachers also wrote. There was a lot of writings on the blackboard. Some class sessions were deathly silent, except for the teacher’s chalk scratching against the board and the soft pencil sounds behind him, as fifty students or so in the class furiously copied everything into their notebooks.

Let’s now cross the Pacific ocean. Somewhere in USA several years later, I was jubilant that teachers didn’t fill the entire board with writings that I had to copy. Of course, there were variations depending on what subject was being taught, but most common method seemed to be writing out the topics or key points followed by verbal discussion. There was a pleasant amount of empty space on the board with maybe occasional illustrations here and there. It was then on the students to decide what and how much to write in their notes.

Of the many years that I spent in schools, the most enjoyable note-taking memory involves this particular teacher in a community college who taught various biology classes. He did not write a lot, but did extensive illustrations. It was a joy to replicate the process in my notebook, listen to his explanations, and annotate various parts of the drawing with key points of his explanations. When you review such notes at a later time, the whole lecture comes alive all over again.

Sadly, I would not feel this kind of joy again as the PowerPoint began domineering the classroom scenes. Why oh why did anyone think using a slide presentation tool was a great idea for teaching? It’s great for a sales pitch, or business reports. Not for teaching! Too many instructors get lazy and make slides with too many words and just read off of their slides. Why would I even bother coming to the class then? I’ll just download the PPT in the comfort of home, because I have learned how to read a long time ago.

In order to justify the use of digital slides, my belief is that they should not contain anything more than titles/headings, key words, and pictures. Even then, there is something very lacking about the instant nature of projecting a computer screen as opposed to hand-writing on the board. Maybe it’s just me, but my mind focuses better when I see the teacher in constant motion — writing or drawing on the board, turning back to face us, making gestures, more writing, etc — whereas my mind starts wandering off when the teacher is static in front of the computer and the projected images change with a click. Because the slide presentation is instant, writing notes becomes difficult as well. It no longer offers the time for writing since teachers can easily click through their slide deck. Who manually writes in today’s classrooms anyway? We don’t hear the scribbling of pencils anymore. It’s all, clack clack clack of typing fingers now.

In my current classes, 99.9% of lectures are done with PowerPoint, and I have adopted tying notes instead of writing as well. I dislike it though. I’m changing my habits out of necessity but I don’t have to like it. Here is the biggest issue: When I review, I have to look at the slides and then read my notes separately. Even if we have the PPT file in advance, it is not as simple to annotate images with your own notes as it would be on paper. Do I dare print out the whole lecture slides? I’d be lynched by tree lovers.

Apparently some students complain that there are too little explanation on the slides if an instructor attempts to make a more interactive lecture by creating a slide deck with mainly pictures. And so most lecture slides end up having quite a bit of text, which tends to force the instructor to read off the text, and the cycle of bad presentation continues…

The experience of re-reading my scribbles from the lecture, recalling the dynamics of the classroom as I re-write my notes… this delicious experience is all gone. This is the impression of present-day classroom from my point of view as an older-generation student.

So, what is the deal with my obsession with writing notes anyway? I often ask myself as well. As I mentioned, I find recalling lectures and retaining information much more effective by keeping hand-written notes. But honestly, I know that I don’t always write for the purpose of learning. There is an element of vanity, I suppose. I love seeing a notebook page getting filled with my own writings. I love running my fingers over the crinkled paper surface full of notes. I don’t particularly have a good hand-writing, so it’s not about aesthetics. It’s probably the feeling of having accomplished something that I get when I see those wonderfully filled pages:

Habits, Preferences, and Priorities…

A blog about notes and notebooks! Yay!

Let me introduce myself:

I am a thirty-something year-old nurse in California who also happens to be a student. I’ve always loved notebooks and journals but it became quite an obsession recently. The precipitating factor? — Planners. Specifically, Erin Condren.

Yes, I jumped on the Erin Condren bandwagon and within a few months, managed to accumulate those bright, colorful planners and notebooks, which by now sit in my bookshelf half unused… I honestly don’t know what caused me to fall so hard for the style. It’s probably the novelty of the idea that you could “decorate” your planners. I had fun for a while (I even started buying stickers and tapes, wow…) until the “playfulness” of Erin Condren designs became too much to bear.

I then switched to Plum Paper planners which were lovely. I had been using the Moleskine Weekly Notebook to keep track of my work schedule and projects. The larger, prettier (but in a subdued way) Plum Paper was to keep track of everything personal. This worked for a while until I realized: 1. Carrying two planners didn’t make sense. 2. My bland personal life did not warrant all the space provided by the 7″x9″ size planners.

And then last year, I unexpectedly became a student again — a graduate program run by the Biomedical Sciences department of the hospital where I’ve been employed for the past few years. With my boss’ blessings, thus began my new life of perpetual running — running from classes to meetings, meetings to classes. This new life required a compact system of organization and planning, a simple planner where I could keep track of both work and school. (forget the personal, which I no longer had.)

Enter Traveler’s Notebook! With its slim design and the brilliant system of multiple inserts, it fit my needs perfectly. The beauty of leather cover was an added bonus. I should mention, my choice was not the extremely popular Midori Traveler’s Notebook, but a much cheaper look-alike by a company called ZLYC from Amazon. I had a monthly insert, weekly insert which had a similar layout as my favorite Moleskine weekly notebook, and a grid notebook insert to keep track of work projects, and a fourth insert for school notes and projects.

If you are a pen/paper enthusiast, you probably know traveler’s notebooks have a huge following, with countless Instagram photos and blogs and reviews. I am not exactly sure how it happened but somehow reading about how people used their traveler’s notebook led me to yet another product, Roterfaden Teschenbegleiter.

Roterfaden was a huge price jump for my comfort level, but here are the reasons I decided to splurge:

• Leather is beautiful. I became addicted to the smell and feel of it since I started using the traveler’s notebook.
• Roterfaden holds regular A5 size notebooks. In it, I still use the same weekly insert I previously had, but also put in several A5 notebooks for my classes.
• Pockets, pockets, pockets! One of the big pockets holds my iPad mini which I extensively use for reading pdf documents.

My notebook preferences have changed drastically — I won’t go into details since I’ve spent too many words describing my planner changes… But simply put, I’ve grown to love these compact, thin, and extremely portable A5 size books for my notes. This was unthinkable even only last year when my go-to notebook used to be an Extra Large Soft Moleskine notebook (pictured in the beginning.) Nowadays I am even finding myself constantly jotting things down in those tiny Field Notes.

I suppose more on notebooks will have to wait for the next time. This became way longer than I planned for my first post. Well, thank you for visiting and let’s see how this goes!