Notes are just notes. Don't over-rely on them (no matter what JC
they come from). True learning is not route memorization of notes.
I find it unfortunate (perhaps even deplorable) that so many
students over-rely on their school's notes, mistakenly regarding it
as if it were the one and only authority, limiting their own (the
students') conceptual understanding of the subject.
You should make the subject you study your own, view it,
conceptualize it and organize it within your head in your own
unique way, not merely blindly following the way your school
teacher (who did the notes for this particular topic and/or year)
did. Only when you own a subject for yourself, then you may excell
in it.
Finally, don't misconstrue or misinterpret my advice here as
saying "all notes are useless"; some notes are better than others,
and notes CAN be useful, but just don't over-rely on them. Keep an
open mind.
For myself and my students, I obtain a variety of different
sources, different textbooks, different notes, different practice
questions, but I always advise my students not to blindly
accept any one particular source, and to think intelligently for
themselves.
Especially once you get to JC level and University level, if
you're an intelligent thinking individual, you will not 100%
completely agree with any one individual source of notes. Because
at higher levels, there are more ways of looking at a given topic
or issue or discussion. And therefore, there will
invariably be unique sets or combinations or perspectives.
I recommend certain books and certain notes over others. But
none of these sources do I completely agree with. I advise my
students (and everyone reading this) to be exposed
to a variety of sources, and benefit from each as a guide or
reference (for certain topics, you may prefer book/notes A, but for
another topics, book/notes B, and so on), but not as a dogma or
doctrine to blindly memorization from (as most students
unfortunately do).
Studying should be enjoyable. It should be a deeply personal
exploration and journey. It should be an exciting and unique
adventure for each student. How enjoyable can a subject be if
it's reduced to a set of notes, to an unintelligent dogma?
well said
you should put this on your website as well
I agree with this fully:
not as a dogma or doctrine to blindly memorization from (as most
students unfortunately do).
That happened to me during my Os; I blindly memorized for my 3
sciences. Fortunately for me, I still managed to scrape through an
A1 for my 3 sciences. By scraping through, I mean marks like 76,
78, etc... (prelim scores)
For A levels, I did not rely on notes as much, and particularly
because I didn't even buy any maths or physics textbooks to use.
Most of my time were spent doing practices and questions from
different sources, schools, TYS... Like that can get 90 marks
somemore.
That's why I have this conclusion that learning and mastering
how to do questions is much better than blindly memorizing the
notes. And this is the way in which I taught students. And this is
the way in which I'm training my sis now for her A levels at the
end of the year. So far so good.