HS and College students what do you do with notes/papers?

[fujiyama]

I'm sorting through junk from the past 3-4 years of college. I've accumulated so much junk that it's taken hours to decide what I should toss. I decided to toss most of it. Fortunately I have only 1 more semester left so hopefully I can get rid of absolutely everything in another 5 months.

God I have so much stuff. I tried giving it to students I know, that may find some use (maybe some old notes and whatnot) but I'm so disorganized, I couldn't give others anything because I couldn't find it (even though I have it).

So can I recycle all these papers? Where could I do that?

[NYC]

1. You could scan it into the computer.

Then, you could use "search" to find something.

[AZCat]

2. I keep all of them

I have lost a few class notes over the years - people have borrowed them without returning them - but most of the last couple of years are saved. They have come in handy a couple of times. Over in the Environment and Energy forum I have dug into my old notes a few times, and for work I have occasionally referenced old homework or class problems.

Mine are fairly well organized, maybe that helps.

[WindRavenX]

3. Either give them to other students or recycle them OR...

I take very detailed and very organized notes for all my science classes, and many of my classmates, well, are lazy ass bums and don't take their own notes. So, when said lazy ass bums whine to me asking to borrow my notes, I agree- after they buy me some coffee. Everyone's a winner!

[Placebo]

4. I don't even take notes...

all of my notebooks are filled with little drawings, random words, and song lyrics!

GAWD college is a joke.

[Nikia]

6. You must go to a different college than I did

I suppose that there were some classes that I could have gotten by without taking notes. I was a biology major though and the department was known for using the book only as background material. Much of what they taught was not in the book and the only way that you'd be prepared for the test was by attending lecture and usually taking notes.

[Moloch]

5. Sell em to the highest bidder! n/t

[pinniped]

7. I've been saving all my notes lately just in case I become famous...

one day and all my writings become priceless.

[Nikia]

8. In retrospect I would have kept it

A lot of it was good stuff that wasn't in any of my textbooks. I would have definitely kept all the papers that I had written. Some of them might have even been appropriate to whip out at a job interview.
On the otherhand, I am also disorganized and our place is a mess because we don't have enough room and organizational skills to hold everything that we have like that.
I also would have never sold back my textbooks, at least the ones that they were paying poorly for. The books that they gave me only $2 a piece for were worth way more than that to me.

[fujiyama]

9. I learned my lesson

regarding selling books back.

I sold a few books back my freshman year, just hoping for 5-8 bucks, but looking back I should have kept them.

Granted, I haven't sold a book back since.

I keep all papers on the hard drive. I never delete a paper, project, or anything of that sort but I should back it all up sometime.

But I'd say the quality of my notes is pretty poor and will be of little use later.

[Hatalles]

10. Keep some. Toss most of them.

Especially if you're thinking about teaching high school or college. I've saved up some pages of notes from certain classes (those that were taught by exceptional professors) -- others I've tossed, either because they were pretty useless (I was only looking busy) or they don't make sense anymore.

[fujiyama]

11. LOL

I love the point about "looking busy" and the notes "not making sense anymore".

Some profs put lecture notes online, which were basically summarized outlines of the book...and I suppose some of it is worth organizing.

[Kickin_Donkey]

12. I graduated in 1985, but in college I saved every note

I ever took and every exam bluebook and term paper, even some of the early drafts of term papers. Why? Partly for historical reasons, partly because so much of my blood, sweat, and tears went into those papers that I could never throw them out, partly because (perhaps vainly) I thought I might become and writer of note someday and these papers would form part of my "work."

I kept almost everything from college: ticket stubs from football games, programs from basketball games, political leaflets, certain issues of the school or local newspaper covering things of interest at the time, course catalogs, etc.

I was pretty organized about it at the time. After each semester, I'd put the paperwork for each class into large envelopes and label it: e.g. Soc 150, Fall Semester '84. After five years of college, I had several boxes of my college "memorabilia" and stacks of newspapers and magazines from those years sitting in a corner of my room and closet at my family home.

The stuff was still sitting there 15 years later – and today the stuff is still sitting in boxes in the new house that my family moved to. I feel like I have to sort some of the stuff to pare it down, especially the old newspapers and magazines.

I don't regret keeping my college notes. Some of the information is outdated or not applicable to everyday life or career (I was a liberal arts major), and I'll probably never look at the vast majority of the notes again. (I have used some of the notes, like the Japanese language notes, when I went to Japan a few years after I graduated.) But I'll hold on to all of my papers. Who knows, I still have time to become a writer of note.

[Endangered Specie]

13. I have a very large box dedicated to holding all of them.

Its kinda pointless, the way I study I rarely read over my notes, I learn by writing them not by reading them.

[NuttyFluffers]

14. be selective and use electronic storage format if you can.

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!

[silverpatronus]

15. i'm a pack rat, i keep everything.

i use one 5 subject notebook each semester, and i keep all my notes, tests, papers, everything from that semester's classes in that notebook. then i label it and toss it in a box. since all my engineering classes are essentially stacked knowledge, it certainly helps having all my old notes. i toss all the textbooks in a box too and keep them, because caribbean students are poor, and i've had so many people in our CSA lend me textbooks so i wouldn't have to buy them that i can't in good conscience do anything but keep them to lend them out to anyone who needs them.

[bicentennial_baby]

16. I keep everything

but I'm a tutor in 10+ subjects, so they come in handy, all the time.