An old professor said, “You
can know how good your students are by seeing their experimental notebooks. I
see no exception in my belief that students' outcome linearly depends on how organized
their notebook is.”
The claim might be a little too much, but it has some truth in it. At least, this was true to me. Back in the days, I wasn’t a good note-taker and my research efficiency was not that great. I changed my habit and my research efficiency got definitely improved.
If you are engaged in time-consuming research activity, you wanna make the best out of it. Take proper notes. You can arrange your style on your experimental notebook, but there are several rules that you must follow as a scientist’s duty.
Things
to include in your notes
rule 1. On your notebook cover: Your name and starting date
rule 2. On the first line: Date to conduct experiment
rule 3. On the first line: Title of the experiment
rule 4. Overall: Use only English if you belong to a research group in the US. Your notebook does belong to your lab as a proof that the experiment was done. Thus, ensure you have taken proper notes.
Here is an example from my experiment notebook:
 |
| my beautiful handwriting (JK)..... |
Good luck taking-notes on your research!
