I didn’t learn how to take good notes until my junior year of college. After that, my notes were so well structured, that one of my professors wanted to use them for her class outline. Although they were neat and organized, my notes were a little boring. I tend to be a little too left-brained at times, so visual note-taking helped me loosen up and bring out my creative side. The practice examples were helpful.
I confess that I have been nibbling around the edges of the sketchnoting world for several years. What started as kind mapping evolved into sketch noting after reading Dan Roam and Sunni Brown. That ultimately led to real sketching and even watercolor. Meinke's book is a nice primer. It is short, but if you do the exercises you will be able to generate more useful notes than what is commonly done. Good luck and n Happy noting