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If you ask each of ten people to recommend a note-taking method, you'll get twenty different answers. Taking notes is an intrinsically personal task, and you will inevitably change the way you take notes over time and in different circumstances. That being said, it's worth taking a look at popular systems and borrowing features that work well for you.
Some research (e.g., Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014) suggests that taking longhand (paper) notes is better for learning than typing notes on a laptop. If you choose to type your notes, make sure you avoid using the extra speed to transcribe information verbatim, since much of the learning benefit of note-taking comes from your cognitive effort to paraphrase, condense, and summarize.
If you choose to organize your notes digitally, consider using a tool that makes it easy to link different notes to each other, such as Obsidian. (There are several similar systems, but I like Obsidian because it stores everything locally using simple Markdown files, as opposed to cloud-based tools with proprietary data formats.) For details on how you might use Obsidian to support your studying, including a quick-and-easy way to create and review flashcards, check out this video tutorial.
Re-reading your notes is one of the least effective ways to study, but it can be tempting because it takes little effort and gives you a sense of familiarity with the material. Instead, try creating and reviewing flashcards, working through practice problems (interleaving different types of problems, rather than doing all of one type before moving onto the next), and spacing your studying of a topic so you have started to forget by the time you go to review. For more study tips, read the book Make it Stick and/or see these related resources.
In my experience, one of the biggest challenges students face when adapting to college is the reduced (and often variable) daily structure compared to high school. Short gaps between classes present golden opportunities to get started on a new assignment, review and organize notes from previous class sessions, or drop by an instructor's office hours for help. Save these “Golden Gaps” from the clutches of doomscrolling, Discord, and other distractions by giving each one a purpose in advance. You can use a fancy term like timeboxing if you like, but the key idea is to pre-commit gaps of time in your schedule to specific tasks. You might schedule these a week in advance, or just the night before. And as your responsibilities ebb and flow throughout a term, you will probably find that you need to adjust how you're using your Golden Gaps, so don't hold too tightly to your initial plan.
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