Open coding and memos

Faith

I'm currently working on a grounded theory report for college. I've come from a science background, so this lack of hard data is quite confusing to me! I've done interviews and transcribed them, and now I'm working on coding them. I'm getting so confused though! Two things my lecturer said stood out to me: 1. Don't use the same words as are in the transcript, and 2. try to code every line. I'm really hoping someone here can give me some guidance on this because there's only so many ways you can say something. So let's say I have this sentence: "but there’s some lectures now who wouldn’t be quite as engaging or ... em interesting in a way", my codes were 'not engaging' and 'not interesting'. This is basically what it says in the transcript though! Is it really that important to change it around? (This is my primary coding btw.)

Then we have another section:
"But overall yeah I think it’s pretty
important because you can miss out on little bits. Sometimes
eh you know kind of really important little bits of information
can be you know your lecturer can just tell you about you
know, like you know a question coming up on the exam or ...
you know em ... yeah also very important just in case you
miss something funny you know"

I've typed it there how it is formatted for coding. But the subject is only really saying one thing there! I can't code every line of that, surely?

Next, what the hell are memos? Are they basically notes to yourself? Are they of any importance?

Any and all help is appreciated here!