Today, while out walking in my neighbourhood, I came up with a new, or additional, purpose for this blog.

I study Social Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology here in Trondheim, and I’m working towards a Bachelor degree with a focus on Political Science and History. I have one year to go before I’m finished and have to find something new to do.

One of the consequences of studying, is that one has to attend lectures. And during lectures, it is usually beneficial to take notes. However, notes are maximally utilized only when processed and corrected properly not too long after the lecture during which they were written. Up until now, I’ve taken notes, and then only read through them on the day before an exam in the course the notes were taken from. This is not very effective, as my notes are usually sketchy and somewhat unfinished, and thus almost more confusing than clearifying when I finally get around to reading them.

Contemplating this, I’ve reached the conclusion that I’ll try to type out my lectures here, in a more complete form than the notes. Hopefully, I’ll be able to structure the notes better, and also add information I didn’t have the time to write down during the lecture. As a result of this, I’m hoping that my notes will be of more use to me during the period just before the exams, and that I will remember more of the knowledge after processing them twice. My belief in this is strengthened by the fact that most guides to studying I have seen recommends students to work with their notes as soon after a lecture as possible.

Obviously, this’ll demand a certain amount of self-discipline of me. Hopefully, it won’t be too much, as I’m terrible at self-discipline, but rather just enough for me to learn how to get myself into actually doing stuff related to studying.

In addition to all of these excellent advantages, this processing of my lecture notes will also help improve my English (hopefully), as I’ll be forced to write long, coherent and comprehensible posts about different topics.

Not to mention that this’ll be potentially useful information in case I end up in yet another Internet discussion about history or politics. I don’t know how many times my lecture notes have saved me in tight spots during such activities…

(Furthermore, this’ll hopefully also increase the “readworthyness” of my blog. We’ll find out on Tuesday August 22, when I have my first lectures this term.)