I use markdown because it looks great when rendered to HTML, but I've only ever used my rendered notes once in three years. I always just grep them or vim search them instead. Since I'm not getting a benefit from markdown, I'm just going to switch back to text files, using one per class for the rest of the semester and a separate file for misc topics/notes.
I think I'm just not the audience for this, but I like the concept of these detailed note systems a lot, I'm just not very often searching my notes again without just using plain old grep.