Prepare your notes. Include headings, subheadings, starred, bolded, and underlined words. Write quick reference headings in the margins. Make your notes as easy to read as a textbook. This will help you quickly locate information.
Create an index. Your textbook will have an index, but your notes don't. By creating one, you save time. Open book tests are aced by excellent organization. If the teacher asks when Martin Luther King wrote his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," and you don't remember, your index can save you valuable time. You need not hunt through 20 pages of notes; you simply look on (see below) page 6! That saved time can be spent on checking answers or writing well thought out essays.
If the book's index is not detailed enough, add its page numbers to your own notes index. Use a different color ink to reference links to the text. In the example below, the red ink represents references to the textbook and the blue ink represents references to your notes.
