Hobbies And Interests
Instructions
Go to a sporting shop or university bookstore and select a notebook that is small and easy to fit into a backpack or to carry. It should be waterproof and consist of either synthetic or coated paper. This ensures that pencil markings will remain legible should the notebook get wet.
Write as much of your notes as possible with a pencil so that if the notebook becomes wet, it will still be legible. Writing with a pen can cause the ink to run and make the data illegible.
Pick up a carrying case for your field notebook to prevent you from losing or misplacing the notebook, as it sometimes easy to assume that you've remembered to include it in a backpack.
Write clearly and concisely in the notebook so that you can look back at it in the future and understand and recollect the notes you entered. Create a table of contents on the first page and make sure each topic corresponds to a page number, and number the pages as you go along.
Include titles at the top of the page so that you know what the note is about if you are browsing through the book. It also helps to include the date, location and weather conditions, if necessary.
Include sketches, diagrams and other pictorial information if possible. Diagrams can help you find hard-to-reach locations or include scale information.
Keep track of location routes if your field locations are in hard-to-reach places. You can include travel times, route numbers, street names, as well as nearby hospitals, gas stations and restaurants. This information keeps your prepared.
Tape samples or descriptions into your notebook. For example, if you are keeping a geological notebook, you may want to collect samples of sediments for your notebook, including any relevant information, such as GPS coordinates, water depth and orientation of strata.