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i have a lot of handwritten notes (and they are atrocious, makes your eyes tear up from squinting trying to make sense of them), and have taken to only keeping those from classes i truly enjoyed and remembered.
i also tried to keep my notebooks through multiple classes, so you'd have a simple 80 page notebook holding at least 2 subjects' notes. saved in paper -- never understood those people who wrote in big bubble letters, had a notebook for every class, and only wrote on the front (not both front and back). even still, few classes are worth keeping the notes. when the teacher is exceptional and giving you information that is normally quite hard (if not impossible) to find in a general search it's best to save their information -- that's where dates, times, class # and name, and prof name comes into importance. in fact i've used teachers as a cited source before (above and beyond the requisite # of sources, naturally) to reinforce a point i've come across. that can be very useful.
now with my iPod, and it's handy dandy reconrding function, it's a breeze to record, file and manage verbal notes. now i just take some hardcopy notes as assistance to the verbal recording and voila' i'm done. it's great! so much space saved.
when it comes to textbooks, i have a bad habit of keeping way too many of them (as does my entire family). though, unless the subject was a blast and the books were great, i try to part with (or not buy in the first place -- use reference book services in some colleges) as many textbooks as i can. this mainly means my math, several science, all my econ and business, and a few health textbooks are generally tossed. unfortunately i must be fast otherwise my family has been known to 'rescue' them for permanent embalming at our Cluttered House of Worthless Antiques.
be fast about separation if you can, 5 second rule is a good measurement. if you cannot decide wholeheartedly in 5 seconds that this item needs to stay with you for another... month, year, eternity, toss it. but then some of us are packrats and will say yes to everything. if that's so, you are doomed, doomed, doooooomed, i say!
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