Question

What should you do when you have finished taking notes?

Answer 1

Test yourself. Test yourself on your understanding of the material by covering up your notes and trying to explain the topic to yourself -- out loud or in your head.

See how many of the important details you can remember, then read the notes again to recap on any information you might have missed.
Explain the material to a friend. Teaching or explaining the material to a friend is a good way to test whether you've fully understood the topic, and whether your notes deal with the topic comprehensively.

Answer 2

Memorize your notes. You'll really see the benefit of having good notes when it comes to exam time and you have to memorize all of the material. If you have been consistently reviewing your notes for 20 to 30 minutes each night, you'll find the memorization process much easier. Here are some popular memorization techniques you can try:

Line-by-line method: If you have to memorize a chunk of text, one good technique is is to read the first line a couple of times, then try to repeat it out loud without looking at the page. Read the second line a couple of times, then try to repeat the first and second line out loud, without looking at the page. Keep going in this fashion until you can repeat the entire chunk of text without looking at the page.
Story method: This method involves turning the information you have to memorize into a simple story that's easy to remember. For example, if you wanted to remember the first three elements in Group one of the periodic table (hydrogen, helium, and lithium) you could use the following story "(H)arriet and (He)nry went to the (Li)brary". The story doesn't need to make sense -- in fact, the sillier it is, the better.
Mnemonic devices: Using mnemonic devices is a good way to remember lists of words in a particular order. To make a mnemonic, simply take the first letter of each word you wish to remember and come up with a short sentence where each word starts with those letters. For example, to remember the lines on a musical staff EGBDF you could use the mnemonic "Every Good Boy Does Fine".[