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I have to take notes or I remember little. Or I simple miss what was said. I learnt to deal with this two decades ago by using a dictaphone to record meetings. It made me listen back to what had been discussed to flesh out notes taken at the time and get a fuller insight into what was said, even having a chance to reflect on what was or what was not agreed and the emphasis people were putting on something. That was 1992.

Now I use a phone, to record voice notes, to snatch images of presentations, and what I missed in our Week 5 Class, one student joining remotely who was physically placed at a desk via a laptop so that they could listen in and observe. There would occasionally be a plaintive cry to turn him around or to answer a question. He could hear us and we could hear him perfectly well. Someone offered a story of a partner at a firm of solicitors being wheeled around on a trolley. There are movies where they do this well - science fiction becoming science fact.

If If take notes, old school, like in school or a lecture, then I will miss too much. I won't pick up on conversations, I wont be able to look up and see how the teacher/lecturer is answering a question, or pay proper to what and how a fellow student is replying. My problem, I am ADHD, is that everything is a stimulus to remember something, or think about something else: that font reminds me of a cereal packet, but which one? My fellow student takes photography - has she replaced my colleague who took photography who I only realised had left a week or so yet she has been gone since months ago. Or where have I seen that person before? Why do I recognise her? Is she a parent of a swimmer, someone from Lewes? I will be just as distractable as I go through my typed up, hand written and recorded notes days later but the cumulative time spent ought to mean that I fill in most of the gaps left by the previous pass.