The female reproductive system is illustrated by a cartoonish drawing of a girl, ovum and all. On her head, she is crowned with a brownish pea, which represents the pituitary gland. Aureola in screaming colour encircle her body with labels suggesting different hormones that run in the cycle. The title of the page reads: "It's a girl's story."
This illustration, drawn with colour pencils on a sheet of paper, was a national sensation earlier this month. The cartoon is not artwork, but a page from the biology notebook of Sirida Tritruengtassana, an 18-year-old student from Patumwan Demonstration School who achieved the highest national admission score in the country this year. Her face was front page on every Thai newspaper after the admission results were announced on June 5, then her study notes went viral on social media after her biology tutor from a famous cram school shared them on his Facebook page.
The question then arises. Does the way Sirida creatively takes notes have something to do with her academic excellence? The whimsy of her cartoon on a serious subject also challenges the stereotype of top-of-the-class pedantry.
Every student has his or her own way when it comes to transforming lectures into words: from doodling key ideas to jotting down verbatim, from using only a black pencil to employing a bunch of state-of-the-art fluorescent marker pens from Japan. There is the mind-mapping technique, to the lesser-known Cornell method, where a sheet of paper is divided into three sections.
Sirida's notes, however, boast something curious with girly anecdotes and flamboyant hand-drawn illustrations.
"It's better than writing something down plainly," said Sirida, who's chosen Mass Comms as her faculty. "The way I take notes is more like, 'Hey let's sing about it. It's fun'.
"Sometimes when I take notes, it's like I'm talking to another Sirida who lives in the future and who will come back to read it again. So it's like, 'Okay, this is what it is all about, Sirida'. It's what I want to explain to myself in the future. It's like a time machine."
With the buzz also comes the question among some who wonder why the notes became the talk of the town. Kwanrudee Phonanan, a ThinkBuzan-licenced specialist in the mind mapping technique, weighed in on the popularity of the top scorer's notes.
Kwanrudee thinks that the public were excited to see the notes because most people don't think of doing something similar.
"It's the combined use of colour and images called visual thinking," said Kwanrudee. "Everything is depicted visually and colourfully. The principle behind it is the same with mind-mapping, which research has shown results in improved memorisation."
But while Sirida's notes have been praised by the public for their creativity and the way they are organised, Kwanrudee thinks that each student should have his/her own method.
"The thing is that when it comes to visuals, people always have different images in their minds," said Kwanrudee.
"If you say the word 'home', a picture that goes on in your head may be a two-storey house, but mine may be a hut. They are two different pictures. It's up to each person in terms of what he or she wants to visually project. So a particular image works differently for each individual."
Sirida has studied at one of the most prestigious secondary schools in Bangkok, but it seems that colourful note-taking is not just confined to city kids, who arguably have more resources.
Life travelled to Samut Sakhon to meet Sasicha Thongkhao-on, a 17-year-old Mathayom 6 student with a grade point average of 3.98 from Samutsakhonburana School, whose note-taking method is similar to Sirida's. Having drawings on her notes, she said, helps her memorise more, especially for biology, one of the subjects she gives most importance to as she's planning to study medicine.
"I really like how the top scorer did her notes," said Sasicha. "Biology is an example of a subject where taking better notes improves study. It's not effective to study this subject with no pictures. For example, you need to look at a picture of the structure of a living thing to understand."
Sasicha has two rounds of note-taking. When she takes lecture notes in class, she tends to scribble rather than write tidily. However, she will refresh her notes by rewriting them more beautifully and systematically, with pictures if possible, as she will rely on them prior to exams.
Apart from biology, the way she takes notes differs from one subject to another as each benefits from different methods. For example, when it comes to subjects like physics or maths, she opts for bullet-points as these subjects mostly deal with formulas. She also does mind-mapping if she feels it fits a particular situation.
For Sasicha, note-taking has been an imperative part of her high school life. She took up note-taking wholeheartedly when she began high school as the curriculum became more academic.
"When a teacher gives us pieces of knowledge, our brain is like a library," said Sasicha. "If we don't take notes, it's like we scatter books at different places. But if we take notes, it's like we put the books in place."
Taking notes in a much less fancy, organised way is Apikit Lertanaworakul, a 16-year-old Mathayom 4 student from Ratwinit Bangkaeo School in Samut Prakan. His writing equipment features a pencil, a ruler and a pen, which he keeps under his personal desk in the classroom. He doesn't like to carry around a pencil case.
"I can just borrow highlighters from my friends if there is something that needs to be emphasised," said Apikit. "I have access to all types of pens and pencils belonging to my friends who sit around me."
Apikit, however, likes to keep it simple when he takes notes. He often simply follows what his teachers put on the whiteboard.
"I just write things down conventionally," said Apikit. "First, I write topics and then I simply break them down with details for each. I do it in a notebook but sometimes I do it on an A4 piece of paper."
While Kwanrudee believes in the power of colour to make notes stand out, she said that using just a pencil and a piece of paper is sufficient. She concludes that at the end of the day, it depends on each person regarding how he or she chooses to take notes in class.
"This is all about different learning methods one adopts," said Kwanrudee. "It would be impossible to say which way is best. It's just a matter of which method is the most suitable for a particular person."
