Thread: Taking notes?
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Old 11-02-2011, 09:01 AM   #49
Hanna B
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 647
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Re: Taking notes?

Quote:
Carsten Möllering wrote: View Post
I have a student, who used to take notes. When I got aware of that I asked him to show me what he was writing down.
When I read his notes I realized that he had written down how he had done the techniques. Not how I had shown them. Which was quite different.
Well, of course. The opposite - the student writing down what the teacher showed, although he could not perform it himself, would have surprised me immensely.

Hopefully somone who has been tranining for, say, two years realises that what he/she is scribbling down is his understanding, made from two years of experience, and that the understanding will change over time. In most cases the student will notice the mistakes sooner or later, say "uh-oh" and either make chances in his old notes or just discard them.

Quote:
Keith Larman wrote: View Post
Had a guy who took copious notes. He was in a class where I assisted the Chief Instructor regularly. I remember the Chief Instructor fixing something in this student -- he tended to overdo a particular movement. So he told him to it vastly smaller. Which actually resulted in the guy still doing it too big, but much closer and he was more successful. He sat down and wrote it all down. I thought "Great!".

Years later I was in a class and watched this same guy telling a newer student the secret to doing this technique. He proceeded to demonstrate with the still too large movement but said "This is how I was shown by the Chief Instructor and this is what *really* works." I asked him about it and he insisted that it was exactly what he was shown and that it was correct because he had it *right here* in his notes.
Sure there are better and worse ways of using notes. This was apparently not one of the best. But my guess is hit guy's attitude towards progress would have been pretty much the same without the notes.

Quote:
Keith Larman wrote: View Post
And I see habits on very experienced people that never seem to go away. I often wonder how many of those things were from corrections long ago that were misunderstood or overemphasized. Then I wonder about myself.
This I guess this something that will happen, notes or not.
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