These are my notes that I took during Microeconomics. During this lecture we learned the basic fundamental Ideas of Individual decision theory focusing on Economic Surplus, Opportunity cost and Decision Pitfalls.
I felt that adding these visual representations to my notes has actually been very helpful especially for studying. When it comes to understanding the basic definitions having a picture allows me to easily understand what I am being asked to understand and remember. For example when looking over my notes in the top left corner you can see the section where we went over Economic Surplus. To help me better understand what Economic Surplus is I added a picture of a full pizza with a slice left over. This represents exactly what economic surplus is an excess of a good or service when supply exceeds demand.
I definitely found this sketch assignment enjoyable and found it very helpful for my understanding of my notes and for studying for a quiz that I will have on Monday. My Microeconomics class is a lecture class with one hundred and eighty people so it is often easy to get distracted and not fully understand the points the professor is trying to make. By going back and analyzing my notes taking visual notes I was able to fully understand the concepts that we are going over.
Hello everyone! For my sketch today, I decided to sketch the notes that I took from my Political science class. The original notes can be found here if you would like to see my strange note taking methods. I actually found the process to be very useful. A lot of these terms and concepts are things that I have to memorize for tests and as my english professor likes to say “we are all to some degree, visual learners.” I found the process of making the sketches to be helpful in remembering as well. Similarly to how writing notes makes them ingrained in your head, making these pictures makes it so that I think of the visiual whenever I think of the concept. Maybe Im more of a visual learner than I thought!
Link to original assignment here
These are my sketched-out notes for Econ 101, regarding the three key decision pitfalls of: failing to think at the margin, ignoring implicit costs, and thinking in terms of proportionality.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say the sketched notes helped me understand the notes better, but they certainly helped me understand the concepts differently. I had already taken these notes in class previously but rewriting them in a drawn/artistic form held the concepts in a different light. Mentally, I was able to visualize each of the three decision pitfalls and their interconnectedness, rather than simply memorizing words and definitions.
After reading the initial assignment, I was weary as to how it would help me digest the content of the class. The biggest difference lies in the engagement that it brought. Drawing out notes instead of writing down words makes the entire process more enjoyable. As with most things in life, the more you enjoy something, the more likely you are to succeed in doing it. Therefore, occasionally visualizing or drawing notes can help you think in an effective and creative way, allowing for you to retain information at a quicker rate because you’re rethinking those concepts in multiple modes.
In my literacy narrative part one, I discussed my relationship with writing, specifically my weaknesses and what I did to make for it. The free writing exercise helped me reflect some of my writing experiences. I then summarized my writing habits from the experiences I recalled and made a rough outline. I thought about writing chronologically but eventually decided not to because it was incompatible with the way I wanted to sequence the main ideas. During the process of writing, I found my writing to still be a bit choppy. After reading the literacy narrative, I also realized there are a lot repetition in it. For example, I started a lot of sentences with “I” and used the word “writing” often. I also forgot to mention in the narrative that I usually plan a little bit before I start writing so I know the general direction I’m heading instead of start writing immediately which I don’t think I’m capable of.
“Sometimes in my essay, the train of thought would just abruptly stop, like an AI that lost connection to the internet instead of a human brain.” This is sentence which I thought would be the most interesting because there is a simile in it and the reader might ask why that is case which I am not too sure myself either.
My narrative centered around what I consider my ‘positive feedback loop’ to learning, where I would read in order to fulfill my learning desires, and continuously read and learn more. I’d go as far as to say that my ongoing process of reading and learning not only shapes the way I read and write, but also my personal identity.
Although the cycle seems to be a clear and important part of my life, it would’ve been difficult to discover without the pre-writing process. The pre-writing process wasn’t strange on its own – it was mainly the fact that I had never really engaged in such a process before. However, it was certainly effective in idea generation and getting me into a free-flowing state during writing. I almost wrote my entire narrative in one sitting, without even thinking much about it. The writer’s block that I usually face was entirely eliminated from my writing process.
Throughout my literary narrative, I didn’t necessary learn anything new about myself – it was more so that I learned to appreciate the way my perspective on reading and writing has ebbed and flowed. However, I did find the hindsight bias within myself surprising. Looking back, my evolution in the way I read and write seems so obvious, almost like a linear path. However, the actual process was filled with lots of confusion and wondering whether I’d ever improve in what I was doing.
Ultimately, from an outside perspective, I believe that the most interesting sentence from my essay is: “However, something about this achievement made me feel empty.” With the achievement in question being my commitment to Emory’s men’s soccer team. It was a good hook into the rest of my story which provided a deeper answer to questions that may have arisen from that statement, such as “why would anyone feel empty after completing an otherwise fulfilling/cull-circle achievement?”
Click here to return to my literary narrative.
The habit of watching instead of reading helped me enjoy The Hobbit on screen, but it also masked why I struggled with the book. In writing the narrative I just published, I tried to translate what film gives me “for free” into reading habits I can carry anywhere: slowing down, reading with a pencil, and asking three questions in the margins—what is being said, how it’s being said, and why it matters.
“Watching” a Book
In my literacy narrative: Lighting the Reading Spark, I tell a story of how a trip to my grandparents’ house helped kickstart my reading and writing journey. The simple act of my grandmother buying a book for me and my brother during our trip to visit them in the summer of my third-grade year was much more powerful than I could ever imagine. It completely changed my view on reading, school, and even myself.
I found writing this narrative very enjoyable. By using the free writing style, I was able to put raw Ideas to paper without any guidelines. Going through the prewriting exercise was especially helpful through this process as I was able to encapsulate the same feelings that I had during the trip to my grandparents. I was able to think back to a very positive time in my life when I had no worries or responsibilities.
Through this literacy narrative, I realized how one small moment can influence who I am. This trip from third grade, which I thought nothing of at the time, sparked my interest in reading which also allowed me to become a more confident writer. Before this trip I had thought that writing was just “not my thing” and that I simply wasn’t born with the ability to read well. But I see now that at that moment it just hadn’t clicked yet. I’ve come to realize the same can be true in other areas of my life as well.
The most powerful sentence in my narrative that I think will stand out to readers is “I don’t know if it was the book or the atmosphere I was in that made this moment so memorable”. To me, this line really captures what my narrative is about – It’s not just about the book, but the feeling and the environment that truly made this moment so memorable.
After completing the first draft of my Literacy Narrative I realized that the process of my writing becomes easier when I am able to clearly remember the memory and relate it to things in my current life. While doing he pre-writing exercise it felt weird to start writing and listing random topics because I was not sure that I would be able to dive into a specific one but it ended up benefiting me heavily. While writing I realized that connecting my emotions to how I read and write now has had a great impact on my thought process and the topics I write about. I found it surprising how easily I could write when I was interested and intrigued about explaining my past experiences. Lastly, I think the most relatable thing about my essay is being in trouble at some point in time and picking up a book out of boredem and finding it to be really interesting.
