The App Every Student Needs

In my opinion, having your notes organized is one of the most important things. If you can’t find them to study for your test or boards later on, then what good are they? I started using this application called Notability my P1 year of pharmacy school and I am so glad that I did. All of my notes are just a click away from my laptop, iPad or iPhone (thank you iCloud sharing). Review the pathophysiology of diabetes? Sure! Study my pharmacology 200+page study guides? Why not?! Look up treatment protocol for acute coronary syndrome? Heck yeah! Literally I can look up anything I need to in less than a minuet, which has proved so helpful for classes like seminar where we SOAP note patient cases all class and will be perfect for rotations!

Before class I download the powerpoint or notes I need to into the app on my iPad, which is very easy to do: open up your notes from blackboard, click open with and click notability. Simple as that. Once your notes are in the app, Notability lets you take notes by: using a pen, highlighting, erasing, typing, move your notes to another location/stretch or shrink them and record the lecture. You can choose everything from tons of different colors to the size of your writing. If you draw a line (like underlining something in your notes) and hold it, the app will make it a perfectly straight line. I don’t know about you guys, but I cannot accomplish that on my own and it makes your notes look so much better. Another feature I love is that if you record your voice, notability will line up the audio with your writing so you can fast forward or backtrack to a specific thing you wrote. I am constantly missing things in class, so I just write “fix” on my notes and then I can go back to that exact spot in the audio and not have to try and find the spot I missed (major time saver).

If you don’t have slides for class or like to take your own notes entirely, you can also just create a blank note on the app. I tend to do that if the professor talks a lot and I wouldn’t be able to fit it all on the slides.

Now let’s get into how I organize my notes on here, because it’s perfection. First thing I do is create subjects for each of my classes by name and I set the color to my designated color for that class, the same one that I use in my planner and so on. When you open slides or create a note, you can file it under a specific subject to organize all your notes for one class. After each semester is over I drag these subjects down into folders that I have labeled with the year of school (P1, P2, P3). By doing this only the classes you are currently taking appear at the top, so you don’t have to scroll through to find your notes. If I ever need notes from a previous year I just click on that years folder and then all my classes appear to choose from.

Every feature on Notability is so easy to use but it honestly has been such a game changer in the way I take notes and study for classes. If you guys do not have this app, you seriously need to go download it and give it a try! As for me, I am going to get back to studying myself, I am wishing you guys nothing but positive vibes in finishing out this semester!

– Madeline