How to write notes in University

· 475 words · 3 minute read

Note taking ##

I write all my university notes in obsidian, and have a generic, but well thought through system.

The root directory consists of 4 elements:

1ls
2# _templates  Privates  Uni  Vault.md
  • _templates includes templates, i currently only use one for class notes
  • Privates contains work and private life content
  • Uni contains all my university notes, scripts etc
  • Vault.md is the Vault (a obsidian specific term, eq: Project, Workspace) entry point

Folder and Note System ###

 1pwd
 2# /home/-/documents/Uni
 3ls -la
 4# total 28
 5# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -    0 14. Sep 14:57 .
 6# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -    0 23. Sep 16:15 ..
 7# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -    0 13. Sep 15:18 00_Scripte
 8# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -    0 13. Sep 15:18 01_Semester
 9# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -    0 31. Aug 12:07 02_Semester
10# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -    0 23. Sep 10:14 03_Semester
11# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -    0 14. Sep 14:57 07_Arbeiten
12# -rwxrwx---+ 1 - - 1863 14. Sep 14:59 Uni.md
13cd 03_Semester
14ls -la
15# total 36
16# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0 23. Sep 10:14  .
17# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0 14. Sep 14:57  ..
18# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0  6. Sep 10:30  00_Webengineering_II
19# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0 13. Sep 13:44  01_Netztechnik
20# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0 21. Sep 09:05 '03_Formale Sprachen'
21# -rwxrwx---+ 1 - - 586 23. Sep 11:44  03_Semester.md
22# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0 14. Sep 15:04 '04_Systemnahe Programmierung'
23# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0 16. Sep 08:15 '05_Software Engineering'
24# drwxrwx---+ 1 - -   0 23. Sep 11:44  06_Datenbanken

Every folder starts with two integers, depending on the order of the appearance of the class in the current semester and the class name separated by _.

Every folder also includes a markdown file with the folders name. This file contains links to the notes contained in the current folder.

folder-markdown

This is required because otherwise obsidian won’t display the link connection in the graph view.

As seen in the screenshot above, my files follow a convention too.

University notes for a single class are prefixed by a abbreviation of the class name and the current date separated by _.:

1xx_YYYY_mm_DD.md
2
3e.g.: se_2022_09_10.md
4-> Software Engineering on the 10th September 2022

Application of choice ###

My go to application for taking notes is obsidian, i chose obsidian because it stores all contents in markdown.

Obsidian supports a wide array of markdown add-ons, plugins other useful stuff for university, such as:

  • graph view

    graph-view

  • callouts (better blockquotes)

    callout

  • diagrams with mermaidjs

    diagram

  • LaTeX

    latex

(obsidian has a vim plugin) 😁

Note syncing ##

I use the obsidian-git1 configured to backup my changes to a git repo hosted on GitHub every 5 minutes.

This plugin requires git to be installed, git credentials being set up and the vault needs to be in a git repository.