How do you organise your notes?

Hi everyone.

I'm in my first year at uni and I am just about to start exams for my first semester modules. Whilst revising and looking at my lecture notes I have come to the conclusion that my notes are absolutely horrible and really make very little sense now it comes to revising from them.

I'm just wondering what other people find most helpful in terms of creating neat versions of lecture notes etc.

Personally I've been writing my lecture notes in a notebook (one for each module) and typing them up when I get home. However, I no longer think this is good practice because typing something doesn't make me remember it the way writing it by hand (and drawing out any relevant diagrams that may have been included in handouts/powerpoints) does. Also, I tend to dump miscellaneous sheets/printouts in a folder and forget their existence.

Yeah, writing things by hand takes forever, but I'm considering doing that next semester and having a folder for each module with neat versions of notes, any notes from extra reading and a copy of the handout/powerpoint for each lecture.

So yeah, basically... how do you organise your notes?

I write my lecture notes/fill in the gaps on the printed notes and put them in my folder.
I then highlight important things when I read back through them.

I try to make my notes nice and neat the first time I write them though - tippex mouses (or wilkinsons own brand) are really useful for this!!

When it's time to revise, I write up key points from notes in nice pretty colours and I also write up the examples as well.

I currently have one big lever arch for most of my second year 1st semester work, but I have one module in it's own ring binder because I think that one is a really important one for what modules I'm choosing next year. Next semester, I'm going to have one big lever arch for most of my modules and then 2 separate normal ring binders for the ones that I think are most relevant for next years modules.

Took me all of 1st year to get myself sorted in terms of how I want to organise things - don't worry if you try something next semester and still feel as if it's not working for you.