Do you remember?

I don’t think I’ve ever studied for a single test in my entire life.  There are rare times that I answer each question right, but I still do great…anywhere between 90%-100%.  I’m not especially gifted…I just take the class seriously and listen in class.  I’ll take notes, but I don’t review them.  I’m not bragging…and there are a lot of people out there that have far better memorization skills – like the guy who can memorize any credit card number by hearing it once, or that savant who can “feel” numbers.  You just have to change the way you learn.

It won’t happen overnight – especially since we’ve spent years and years having teachers/parents making us do repetitive memorization tactics.  I remember staring at Spanish word lists for hours.  “Read it slowly,” they’d tell me…”then cover up one side of the paper and quiz yourself.  Repeat until you know them all.”

I remember about 10 Spanish words.

Children learn quicker because their minds aren’t as clouded as ours.  Their creativity is always with them while ours takes a bit of setup – like making your work area conducive to creativity…placing your drink next to you…quieting the area down…putting music on…going to the bathroom…thinking “ok NOW I’m ready to learn this.”

You have to change the way you learn.  Most rapid learners do not learn from step-by-step memorization (looking at information long enough until you remember it)…they link ideas together.  They see the entire picture unfold as the pieces are given to them.  They’re not just memorizing what’s on a standardized test.

When I need to memorize a list of definitions, I look at the word and then what it means.  Then I quickly stare at the word until I can feel what the word is saying.  For instance, I have to know what “federalism” means.  The definition tells me that it’s a division of power between state and federal governments.  When I look at the letters of the word though, I see letters that are higher and letters that are lower.  I see the word “federal” in there.  The word itself looks important and clean…something that should be honored a bit.  It takes me a few seconds to do this, but I don’t forget what it means.

The trick is to do this naturally and not have to remember to, well, remember.  Be a kid and clear your head.  Open it up to new ideas.  Don’t make a memorization system that’s set in stone…like forcing yourself to make flash cards for every test.  Learn and remember as the information comes in.  Then once you have it, plot it somewhere in your mental web of other information.

It also helps me to take a word’s feeling and relate it to everything else I’m learning.  Relate it to the teacher’s inflection and mood when it’s being taught.  Relate that to everything else in the topic.  Make the pieces fit together, and you’ll remember the chain even when one link is missing.

Then there are some other memory “hacks”…like memorizing a sequence of numbers by assigning letters to numbers (a=1, b=2,…), then creating a story using the resulting letters.  I haven’t ever done this, but I know my dad once memorized a long network key for a wireless network using this method.  The story was off the wall, grammatically incorrect and confusing to others…but it worked for him.  He might still remember what that key was, just because he made his story his own.

I’ll leave you with a clip from an article about that autistic savant:

“Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn’t “calculating”: there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. “When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That’s the answer. It’s mental imagery. It’s like maths without having to think.” – guardian.co.uk