Mike sat on the edge of the bed shaking. Ebenezer Scrooge was lucky. He never met the Ghost of Concepts Lost. What a vile and loathsome creature that was!
It all started after coming home for Christmas break, excited that he survived his first semester of law school. Finals were challenging, but felt he had done well.
In horror he looked at his grades that had just been posted. His visions of “A” grades and lucrative job offers were crushed by the harsh reality of just how competitive law school really was.
Finally falling into an exhausted sleep, he was rudely awakened by the Ghost of Concepts Lost. This horrible creature took him back to one of his law school classrooms.
Revisiting his old haunts, he saw the class from a different point of view. He saw himself taking his usual handwritten notes. He was able to hear the lecture again, and see his notes. He noticed that he thought he understood the lecture, but the notes showed that he didn’t completely get it.
The ghost showed him lecture after lecture, each time the newness of the material jading his notes. He was learning but still missing a lot.
Back in his room, Mike sat hunched on the edge of his bed in despair pondering what had just happened.. Through his covered eyes he noticed that the room started to be filled with light. Startled, he looked up. “It can’t be dawn already!” he thought.
Instead of a sunrise, a beautiful apparition appeared before him. “I am the Ghost of Concepts Learned” she said. “I’m here to help you not only for the rest of your school year, but for the rest of your life. Come with me!” Gladly he arose and followed her. She looked much more promising than her counterpart.
Mike saw himself in the same classroom listening to his professor lecturing. This time, he saw one of his classmates taking notes on her laptop. He was surprised that she wasn’t taking that many notes. She was just outlining the key points in some kind of software that looked like a word processor.
The Ghost explained that this software is called PerfectNotes. It records everything that is said, and creates a timeline of the whole class. He noticed that his fellow student was creating bookmarks in the recording that corresponded to her outline. Other times she made bookmarks that marked places she wanted to come back to.
Then the vision changed. He saw the same student at home, working on her laptop. He saw her going through her notes. When she got to a point where she was confused, she clicked a button and instantly got back to that part of the recording. Other times she clicked by the bookmarks that marked places she wanted to come back to. She then fleshed out her notes after hearing again what she was confused by. In a couple minutes, her notes were much more accurate and complete than his ever were, even with all of his frantic scribbling.
“Wow!” Mike said in awe. “I’ve never seen anything like that before! I had tried taking a recorder to class, but it was clumsy and difficult to use. I don’t want to have to go back and hear the lecture again and again. This takes you right back to the parts you missed without rewinding and fast forwarding!”
The Ghost was pleased that Mike had understood the possibilities of this new note taking software.
He again found himself in his room, but instead of in anguish, he was now elated. He fell asleep dreaming of the possibilities.
He was rudely awakened by a pounding on his door and his younger brother yelling to him that it was time to open presents. “It’s Christmas morning!” he realized with a start. All of that had been accomplished in just one night!
Jumping out of bed and throwing his clothes on, he hurried to be with his family. He was still pondering the messages of the night’s visitors. He was still in a daze when his parents handed him a box. Opening it, he discovered a laptop!
“Thanks guys! This is just what I needed!” He gave them a big hug, and excitedly got to work opening the various baggies and plugging everything in.
Once he got his notebook computer running, the first thing he did was to go to www.PerfectNotes.com. He downloaded the software and tried it out. This was going to totally change his classroom experience!
Visions of top grades and lucrative job offers again danced in his head.
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