PRACTICE, DON'T MEMORIZE!: A good memory is a wonderful asset and it will carry you far in many subjects, but not in most econ courses. Even if your prof wants you to memorize the definition of lots of terms, you're better off practicing working problems of the sort available on this site. If old tests from your prof are available, use those too. Do homeworks, rework examples done during lecture, rework examples from your text. Please believe us! We've been teaching this stuff for many years! If you outline the text or copy over your notes, you're probably wasting time! Such methods may work well in other subjects, but they are usually deadly time wasters in econ.