Hey guys!
Welcome to my first study with me video for this school year. In this video
I'm going to be taking notes for a chapter of AP US history from my textbook. I
started off by making the header for the chapter, which is just the title of the chapter. And
now I'm going to be taking notes, obviously. So the system that I'm using right now is
for the larger section headers, I will write the title and then highlight all the way across the page.
For the smaller subheadings - I just write the heading and then I highlight it normally.
Along with taking notes, I'm completing the vocabulary assignments
I have as I go. For apush
my teacher assigns us to do a certain number of vocabulary words
from a list that I have on the left side of my desk. As I encounter each word used in the chapter
I write down the definition and its historical significance.
Now the strategy I use for actually taking notes is very similar to what I mentioned in
My how I take history notes video. That video was about AP euro,
but I feel like the strategies that I used in AP Euro still apply to apush.
However, I do find that as of the couple of weeks that I've been in apush so far,
it has a lot more focus on finer details and dates,
since US history does cover a much shorter time period than something like AP European history. I
haven't needed to adjust my note-taking style for history that much between these two classes,
so I do highly recommend you check out that video and the video that I have
about advice for AP European history. A
basic explanation of how my note-taking works I suppose.
Basically, I sum up each paragraph into one bullet point.
I'm not sure whether it's because of this textbook and how wordy it tends to be, or just the way
it's structured, but I do find that I can condense things even further.
Combining maybe a whole section, or at least a couple of paragraphs, into just one bullet point line.
Some other tricks I use to stay concise, and save how much time I have to spend writing are -
One to use a lot of symbols and abbreviations.
My favorite as you can probably tell is to use an arrow to show leads to, or causes, or comes after.
Also at least in California, we learn a lot of US history in eighth grade.
So I don't bother writing down anything that I already know by heart.
For this chapter in particular,
I was able to condense it quite a bit since the period of history that this chapter is about
is also related to act two of Hamilton. And I know the musical rather
well, I've listened to the soundtrack a ton and I even got to go see it in Chicago,
so I knew a lot of the information already.
It was pretty cool reading through it and thinking oh this
corresponds with that song. And you might have seen even in parts of my notes, that instead of
writing down the particular issues that were being debated or particular events that happened in the
battle between
Federalists and Democratic Republicans,
I just mentioned the name of a particular song and Hamilton that summed up the situation pretty well. I
Don't know if I'm the only person who's bothered by this, but I
noticed that the top of my head showed up in this video quite a bit, which is unfortunate.
I think it had to do with the way my camera was set up.
I was trying to get as wide of an angle as possible so that you could see as much
of the paper and textbook and all that as possible,
but it ended up so that whenever I leaned over my desk, the top of my head ended up in the frame.
I hope that doesn't bother you too much, and
if you didn't notice it until I pointed it out. I'm sorry about that, too.
At this point I realized I had not been keeping track of which vocab words
I had done, as you can see on at the assignment sheet
I check them off and then I write a number next to them. Since this unit I was assigned to do 30,
I'm writing numbers to keep track so that I know exactly how many I've done and how many more I need to do.
That's pretty much everything that I could ever say about APUSH at this current point in time.
Again, I've only been taking this class for about a month at this point of recording the voiceover.
Although by the time you see this, they'll have been a month and a week. I know a shocking difference
So I'm just going to fill up the two ish minutes left of this video by talking about random things,
because I can see those analytics. I know that not that many people are actually watching this far into the video. So
right now I am working on a video about SAT advice, and
I'm not sure exactly when I should release it.
I know the October SAT is on the sixth and the only two Friday,
posting scheduled days that I have are the 28th and the 5th. I
don't really want to put it out on the 5th, because then that's not at all helpful to those of you
who are taking it the next day.
But at the same time,
I'm not sure whether I will have it completely polished at its best quality with the best tips that I can give
by September 28th.
So I was thinking,
should I post it on October 5th, post it on September 28th
even if it's not perfect yet, or I could post it even later since people are always taking the SAT. I'm
just trying to focus on the October 6th day, since based on what's happening with my friends
and my school, it seems like the most people are going to take it in October.
So I want to help as many of you guys as possible.
There's also the issue that, if I post the SAT advice video on September 28th,
then my 'October: Plan With Me' video will need to be moved back into once October has already started. So
what do you guys think?
Here are my pros and cons: I know, I love overthinking everything. I
will put a poll in the cards right now, and it would be greatly appreciated
if you could leave your input there or in the comments.
Also in the comments, if you have any questions that you really want me to address in that 'SAT Advice' video,
please do let me know. If you have advice for other people,
also, be sure to leave that in the comments, because let's just all help each other out here. And
if you have questions that you really want me to answer,
YouTube comments are not really the best place to ask, since I can't go through all of them. I
recommend Instagram, but I'm also rather slow at checking messages there. Sorry about that! I
hope you enjoyed this video. And if you'd like to see more study with me videos, I will link some on the screen.
I also upload new videos every Friday, and my Tumblr and Instagram
are @StudyQuill if you'd like to see pictures of my notes.
See you next time!