Such a long time, did they already have pen and paper?
I can't remember, so much has changed.
Hmmmm....Actually went to medical school > 8 years ago....let me detail somethings that most may not know about it....
1st year for a "traditional" medical school, fall semester is usually biochem and anatomy....both usually involve a lot of diagrams and less note taking.
Your prof may or may not have handouts....ours used slides and were just transitioning to powerpoint....no joke...but think about it...not much of that information has changed over the years....esp for anatomy. Biochem, they add on for a (very) few new disease processed, and recently added the HMGCoA pathway.
Spring is usually histology and physiology....again histo is a lot of drawing of cells. Physio is less so, but more flow chart like diagrams. Micro...some note taking some diagrams....Neuro science...._lots_ of diagrams....
2nd year....hardly anyone goes to class....our second year class room was ~1/3 the size of the first year....so small that the entire 2nd year class could not fit into the lecture hall at the same time. I am neither joking nor exaggerating. Fall is pharm...good for notetaking...as is path....spring is a continuation of path and intro clinical medicine....again both are ok for note-taking.
The problem here is also that most schools still have a note-service....this is where someone is responsible for taping the lectures and distributing them out for people to review and type out the notes....the original crowd-sourcing. This is usually why most realize that going to class is rarely helpful.
3rd year....clinicals...ha - forget about note taking....you're on the move constantly, and scribbling furiously on a scrap of paper, and mostly reading out of a pocket sized book when you have those rare moments of down time....that or you're sleeping. The few lectures you have, you'll be too busy eating, or catching up on sleep. No...not kidding here either.
4th year....you pick easy electives, finish your core classes.....the fall you're off interviewing for residency, you hardly ever take notes..."'cause you know it all" already. You're just killing time til you match and then killing more time til you graduate.
Intern year.....you realize you know squat -- just like 3rd year of med school, but now you actually have responsibility! You never get a chance to sit through a lecture cause you're damn pager is going off...during rounds the orders are barked out so quickly, you'll only be able to jot 1/2 of it down on any available scrap of paper....you'll devise your own system of how to handle this....and I assure you....it will not be electronically.
2nd year....you actually find that you did learn something the previous year (must have been via diffusion)....but now you're the one barking orders, or you have a much better idea of what's coming so you rarely have to write much down.
Just my $0.02....YMMV
Source: Spent the last 9 years as a resident/fellow and the 4 years prior to that as a med student....and saw everyone else doing the _same_exact_thing_.