URGENT: Macbook Pro 13" or iPad Pro 12.9" for college?
Posted: 11 Aug 2017, 02:30
Hey there! It's been a while since I've been active on here, but I somehow felt that this would be a good place to ask such a question, considering the amount of veteran computer users on this site. Now, before I really get into the details, I need to mention a few things. First of all, I wrote "urgent" in the title because my semester starts at the end of August, and I'd like to get the device a little in advance so that I can learn to use it (somewhat) NOW instead of messing around during the first few weeks. Second, I actually already decided on and bought the Macbook a few weeks ago. I own it right now, but I'd never considered the iPad until after the fact. Thirdly, this is going to be my FIRST EVER year of college; I've been a highschooler up till now, further emphasizing my wish to decide this now so that I don't screw up those first crucial weeks. And if it matters, I'm pre-med. Specifiaclly, I'm a Mathematical Biology major, meaning I'll be dealing with a ton of math, bio, and chem. Lastly, this is going to be loooooooooong.
There are two things that I think I was supposed to do in high-school. One of those was to get into college, which I did. The second was arguably to learn how to take notes and study, to figure out what "works for [me]." I did NOT do this. I didn't take it easy, but I never took notes. Even in classes with tons of info, like AP World History, I'd just listen to lectures and (sometimes) read the book. No note-taking involved. However, there were times in which I tried taking notes, and learned a thing or two about myself in the process.
The most successful of these attempts was in AP Calculus BC, in which I'd sit in class, and copy literally everything the teacher wrote on the board. In doing so, I'd "hear" nothing he actually explained. When I'd go home, I'd open up that night's homework problems in the book, and then stare at my notes and try to make sense of them. And you know what? It worked. Really well, actually. Within about 10 minutes, I'd have figured out how to do the basic set of problems, and as I pushed through the HW, I'd "decode" more and more examples from that days notes until I'd solved the more advanced HW problems too. But there was one time, ONE TIME, when it was the night before the test, and I could not for the life of me decode the damn notes. Of course, this was my fault for saving multiple days' HW for the last night. There was no opportunity to ask the teacher. I never learned that concept (it had something to do with the area of polar graphs), and didn't know it on the AP exam. I still don't know it.
This taught me that I cannot write and "hear" (listen and remember or understand lectures/explanations) at the same time, and that in some cases (ie math), written notes are the only option.
A much less successful attempt could be found in my AP Chemistry class. See, this class was structured much the same way as my Calc class, in that the teacher would lecture in class, always using handwritten notes (no powerpoints etc), and then assign HW problems. The only difference was that the lecture seemed much more information-dense, since there would be theory as well as application through problems (whereas Calc was just problems). I tried the same strategy from Calc: to copy down every word and example in class and then decode it at home to do the HW. The first problem I encountered was that I just couldn't write fast enough when in class and would usually only get fragments of the notes (the teacher filled out the white-board and then erased to recover space). But this obstacle was easily overcome, because the teacher was kind enough to take photos or scans of his notes and then upload them to his website. And I have notes! Sure, they're exactly the same as the teacher's, but it's not like I was doing any paraphrasing or actual thinking to begin with anyway. Yay, right? WRONG! I found that my strategy of decoding the notes at home to do the HW just wasn't working. I couldn't figure them out like I could in Calc. Every single night, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't solve the problems. And what's worse, even with me not writing in class anymore, I STILL didn't "hear" or understand the lectures. The thing is, my original Chemistry teacher didn't really do a job of teaching. And because this wasn't college, where you need to teach yourself or fail, I was able to pass his class without ever learning anything. But I transferred schools between this gen chem class and my AP Chem class. All the other kids in the class had a much more solid foundation then me. Combine this with the fact that I was using fragmented notes the first third of the semester (and not absorbing anything in the lectures as a result), and it becomes hard to determine whether or not this failure was because of my system, or because of being extremely behind. Despite this, I learned that I am a terribly slow writer, and that trying to decode notes to learn things on your own doesn't work very well if I don't have a strong foundation in the subject (strong arithmatic and algebra skills led to easy decoding of notes in Calc, while poor gen chem foundation led to horrible decoding in Chem).
Then it comes to social studies classes like AP World History and US History, or maybe Human Geography and Government and Economics. I found a common trend in them: I even suck at reading. Yeah. These classes had attempts at notes in the beginning. When I started the first of these classes (WHAP), I attempted to take notes not in class, but on the book when I read it. I ran into a problem fairly quickly: I couldn't read and take notes at the same time. Why? It's been so long since this attempt that I actually don't remember this too well, but I think it had to do with the fact that I found it impossible to identify what was worth writing down and what wasn't until I was done with the chapter. If you ask me about the plot of the 5th Harry Potter book, I will leave out the 300 pages of interesting-but-terribly-unnecessary-school-related-slice-of-life-nonsense, but only because I finished that book and know what mattered and what didn't. Hell, even when I was done with a chapter, I still found it hard to pin-point the important. But that didn't matter, because taking notes after reading would require another read, since I obviously wouldn't remember enough to take notes from memory. And that takes too much time. On top of all this, I read horrendously slow, even during initial read-throughs. I learned here that I'm unable to take notes from a reading until I'm done with said reading and have re-read it. There isn't enough time to do this and on top of it all, I read ridiculously slow to begin with. Something like highlighting may work better, though I never even tried that and just ended up reading the chapters before tests.
One last attempt. This is from my classes in Bio 1, AP Bio, and Anatomy and Physiology. In each class, the teachers would teach from powerpoints that they'd make available to the students. The tests were based off of them, and the teachers would teach by going through and putting the different concepts into context. In AP Bio and A&P, we'd actually often get interesting stories and tie-ins that would make the lectures more interesting. These little additional tid-bits made all the difference in terms of understanding. I usually wouldn't need to write them down, but in AP Bio I'd often forget them or disassociate them from the correct topic. This was likely because of the high mass of info in AP Bio, and made me think that maybe I should have printed the notes and annotated them. In A&P though, where there was less info and I could actually keep the stories and tie-ins well associated with their topics, I loved to have the powerpoints on my iPhone and follow along during lectures. It was also fantastic having it all in one place and take up such little space, so that i could whip it out whenever and just get to memorizing. I learned that annotating computer documents helps keep things clear when there's a ton of info, but it's also amazing to have it all with you electronically.
Now that that's all said an done, you may be wondering "why the hell did you tell me your life story?" and to be honest, I don't know what all this raw info actually means in terms of what kind of note-taker I'd be and what kind of device would work better for me. That's where I need your help. I'm a slow writer, so typing when it's not math and I haven't been provided with any kind of additional slides makes sense. The iPad can do that. Highlighting during reading makes sense. The iPad can do that. Writing is necessary for math. The iPad can do that. Annotating given documents and having them with me would be nice. The iPad can do that. However, a notebook + Macbook combo can do it all too, and I'm familiar with traditional computers. I don't know which is better... any help would be appreciated.
There are two things that I think I was supposed to do in high-school. One of those was to get into college, which I did. The second was arguably to learn how to take notes and study, to figure out what "works for [me]." I did NOT do this. I didn't take it easy, but I never took notes. Even in classes with tons of info, like AP World History, I'd just listen to lectures and (sometimes) read the book. No note-taking involved. However, there were times in which I tried taking notes, and learned a thing or two about myself in the process.
The most successful of these attempts was in AP Calculus BC, in which I'd sit in class, and copy literally everything the teacher wrote on the board. In doing so, I'd "hear" nothing he actually explained. When I'd go home, I'd open up that night's homework problems in the book, and then stare at my notes and try to make sense of them. And you know what? It worked. Really well, actually. Within about 10 minutes, I'd have figured out how to do the basic set of problems, and as I pushed through the HW, I'd "decode" more and more examples from that days notes until I'd solved the more advanced HW problems too. But there was one time, ONE TIME, when it was the night before the test, and I could not for the life of me decode the damn notes. Of course, this was my fault for saving multiple days' HW for the last night. There was no opportunity to ask the teacher. I never learned that concept (it had something to do with the area of polar graphs), and didn't know it on the AP exam. I still don't know it.
This taught me that I cannot write and "hear" (listen and remember or understand lectures/explanations) at the same time, and that in some cases (ie math), written notes are the only option.
A much less successful attempt could be found in my AP Chemistry class. See, this class was structured much the same way as my Calc class, in that the teacher would lecture in class, always using handwritten notes (no powerpoints etc), and then assign HW problems. The only difference was that the lecture seemed much more information-dense, since there would be theory as well as application through problems (whereas Calc was just problems). I tried the same strategy from Calc: to copy down every word and example in class and then decode it at home to do the HW. The first problem I encountered was that I just couldn't write fast enough when in class and would usually only get fragments of the notes (the teacher filled out the white-board and then erased to recover space). But this obstacle was easily overcome, because the teacher was kind enough to take photos or scans of his notes and then upload them to his website. And I have notes! Sure, they're exactly the same as the teacher's, but it's not like I was doing any paraphrasing or actual thinking to begin with anyway. Yay, right? WRONG! I found that my strategy of decoding the notes at home to do the HW just wasn't working. I couldn't figure them out like I could in Calc. Every single night, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't solve the problems. And what's worse, even with me not writing in class anymore, I STILL didn't "hear" or understand the lectures. The thing is, my original Chemistry teacher didn't really do a job of teaching. And because this wasn't college, where you need to teach yourself or fail, I was able to pass his class without ever learning anything. But I transferred schools between this gen chem class and my AP Chem class. All the other kids in the class had a much more solid foundation then me. Combine this with the fact that I was using fragmented notes the first third of the semester (and not absorbing anything in the lectures as a result), and it becomes hard to determine whether or not this failure was because of my system, or because of being extremely behind. Despite this, I learned that I am a terribly slow writer, and that trying to decode notes to learn things on your own doesn't work very well if I don't have a strong foundation in the subject (strong arithmatic and algebra skills led to easy decoding of notes in Calc, while poor gen chem foundation led to horrible decoding in Chem).
Then it comes to social studies classes like AP World History and US History, or maybe Human Geography and Government and Economics. I found a common trend in them: I even suck at reading. Yeah. These classes had attempts at notes in the beginning. When I started the first of these classes (WHAP), I attempted to take notes not in class, but on the book when I read it. I ran into a problem fairly quickly: I couldn't read and take notes at the same time. Why? It's been so long since this attempt that I actually don't remember this too well, but I think it had to do with the fact that I found it impossible to identify what was worth writing down and what wasn't until I was done with the chapter. If you ask me about the plot of the 5th Harry Potter book, I will leave out the 300 pages of interesting-but-terribly-unnecessary-school-related-slice-of-life-nonsense, but only because I finished that book and know what mattered and what didn't. Hell, even when I was done with a chapter, I still found it hard to pin-point the important. But that didn't matter, because taking notes after reading would require another read, since I obviously wouldn't remember enough to take notes from memory. And that takes too much time. On top of all this, I read horrendously slow, even during initial read-throughs. I learned here that I'm unable to take notes from a reading until I'm done with said reading and have re-read it. There isn't enough time to do this and on top of it all, I read ridiculously slow to begin with. Something like highlighting may work better, though I never even tried that and just ended up reading the chapters before tests.
One last attempt. This is from my classes in Bio 1, AP Bio, and Anatomy and Physiology. In each class, the teachers would teach from powerpoints that they'd make available to the students. The tests were based off of them, and the teachers would teach by going through and putting the different concepts into context. In AP Bio and A&P, we'd actually often get interesting stories and tie-ins that would make the lectures more interesting. These little additional tid-bits made all the difference in terms of understanding. I usually wouldn't need to write them down, but in AP Bio I'd often forget them or disassociate them from the correct topic. This was likely because of the high mass of info in AP Bio, and made me think that maybe I should have printed the notes and annotated them. In A&P though, where there was less info and I could actually keep the stories and tie-ins well associated with their topics, I loved to have the powerpoints on my iPhone and follow along during lectures. It was also fantastic having it all in one place and take up such little space, so that i could whip it out whenever and just get to memorizing. I learned that annotating computer documents helps keep things clear when there's a ton of info, but it's also amazing to have it all with you electronically.
Now that that's all said an done, you may be wondering "why the hell did you tell me your life story?" and to be honest, I don't know what all this raw info actually means in terms of what kind of note-taker I'd be and what kind of device would work better for me. That's where I need your help. I'm a slow writer, so typing when it's not math and I haven't been provided with any kind of additional slides makes sense. The iPad can do that. Highlighting during reading makes sense. The iPad can do that. Writing is necessary for math. The iPad can do that. Annotating given documents and having them with me would be nice. The iPad can do that. However, a notebook + Macbook combo can do it all too, and I'm familiar with traditional computers. I don't know which is better... any help would be appreciated.
) I'd take that advice with a grain of salt.
