GOODNOTES 5 [DIGITAL NOTETAKING APP]

 Hi everyone, semester is starting soon for me and I would like to share a helpful application for everyone specifically for students. My current favorite app on my iPad would be GoodNotes 5 as for taking handwritten notes. I will share few points that you can consider before purchasing the app. 

LAUNCH SCREEN

With GoodNotes, you can create documents and notebooks which I would say very helpful in organizing your notes. You can even create your own favorite list from the documents or the notebooks itselves.

SEARCH FUNCTION

This function can be used from “Documents” and you will get results from your notebook titles, written notes, typed notes, and any PDFs. You’re presented with a thumbnail of each notebook and any pages that contain your search. Just tapping on it will bring you to that page where any instances of the search term are highlighted. Along the bottom of the page you’ll be able to cycle through the pages in the document containing your search term.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR NOTEBOOKS

I'm the person who usually consider 3 things when I purchase notebooks. The design of the cover page, the layout of the sheets and it must be practical (having pockets, division of the notebooks etc.)

For GoodNotes, you can choose your own cover page. They have several designs and themes. You can draw/ design it yourself too. First requirement fulfilled for me.

Next, layout of the sheets.  GoodNotes includes several categories of paper:

• “Essentials”: standard blank, dotted, squared, ruled narrow and ruled wide sheet
• “Writing Papers”: eight varieties of columned paper including Cornell, single, two and three column layouts
• “Planner”: basic layouts for accounting, to-do lists, monthly, and weekly layouts

Additionally, you can choose the size of the notebooks as well. It supports many page sizes (A7-A3, GoodNotes Standard, Letter and Tabloid) and plenty of paper templates. Your pages can either be in portrait or landscape mode.

VARIOUS PENS + HIGHLIGHTER

GoodNotes has 3 types of pens you can choose from which are fountain pen, ball pen and brush pen. I rarely use ball pen hehe. Physically, I loveeeeeeeeeee to buy pens. All those colorful pens and different types of it. Using GoodNotes, sure it save my money but it's worth it because my notes still looks like how I would do it traditionally instead of digitally. 

You can adjust the stroke width as well according to your preference. 

If you don't like to see handwritten notes, you can always add text. Especially when you just need to paste words from other materials.

Like the pen, you can create custom colors and adjust the size of the highlighter. You can also access your three favorites from the toolbar. You can constrain the highlighter in GoodNotes to draw in straight lines. You don't have to worry about not highlighting it in a straight line anymore.

Also, creating shapes. You just need to click on the shape button and draw whatever shape you need. GoodNotes has a smart shape feature to draw shapes that convert to clean shapes. 

ADDING IMAGE TO YOUR NOTES

GoodNotes offers a direct access when placing photos from your library but you can just drag an image from the Internet or your lecture slides to your notebooks. 

Overall, this app deserves 5 stars for its functions. 

All set for my new semester. Wish me luck!

JESSUP INTERCONTINENTAL FRIENDLY ROUNDS

Hi everyone! It's March 2021 already. I have finished my 5th semester of degree in February and that's the reason why you have only seen my post about my new favorite wireless earphones. 

You can still purchase the earphones and use my discount code. READ HERE

I was also busy with mooting as usual. I recently participated in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition 2021 Jessup Intercontinental Rounds Friendly rounds. The administrators are Evgeny Minchev, Tiago de Freitas and Pierre Durand from Jessup Bulgaria and Jessup France. 

There were 8 competing teams from 7 countries - Bulgaria, France, Latvia, Malaysia, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden.

I am very grateful for this Friendly as it really helps to polish my advocacy skills and also my knowledge (specifically on Public International Law this time) for sure. Also, I just took the law in my 5th semester, so yeah practicing it during the moot. 

Also, I guess the biggest hurdle throughout the rounds would be the time difference. My first experience to moot virtually at 12am-3am was tough. I had to stay awake and my head hurts a lot the next day. Still hurting though. Luckily it was only 1 round. Other rounds were at 7pm-10pm for me~

12am-3am 😂

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful journey and experience. I love meeting new people (albeit virtually, better than nothing) and of course the valuable feedbacks from the judges. It was even interesting that the judges themselves joined Jessup, some from 10 years ago. The judges also shared their career path. So cool that their career are still related to Public International Law.

Meet my teammates! 

From Left : 

1) Wan Nur Fatini, we went to the same audition to moot in 2018 and we have participated in 3 moot competitions together including Jessup and I would say this is my favorite. We share the position this time and that I guess the reason why we spend so much time talking to each other. I am glad that both of us decided to be here, to join this competition together.

2) Wardah is our Team Captain and she has completed her law degree last month! It's an honor to work with her and I can't to see more of her achievements in the future.

3) Iqmal acts as the Solicitor for team and I was really excited when he first join the team. I was assigned to be his mooting coach in 2019 for the Faculty's Internal Moot (it was part of their academic assessment). When I met him, I could tell that he's such an amazing person and definitely will be a mooter one day. Yes, he did. He joined NAMCO last year and this year's Jessup. That's just spectacular.

4) Ameerah Batrisyia! We went to the same audition to moot in 2018 and we have participated in 2 moot competitions together. This is the second time. As you can tell, she's an incredible advocate! Amazing research skills as well. 

We are preparing for the Global Rounds now and I will post more after the competition. Wish us luck!