I am a college student and I am constantly reading at least five text books, taking notes, reading articles, looking at diagrams, listening to lectures, and trying to make sense of it all! I generally get good grades on most of my assignments. I wish I had a photographic memory or some way to look at or read a page and remember everything. I have found something interesting about the way I learn, and I would like to share it with you.
Our mind, as I understand it with my limited Psychology 1010 education, creates connections to form a network of neurons for memory and other mental functions. These connections can create pathways that lead from one thing to another, to another, to another, well you get the idea.
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These connections are formed when we learn new things and connect them to things that we have already learned. Thus, the more we know, the more connections we can make in our mind (in my opinion, or theoretically). These connections, as I mentioned above can help create memories. These memories then become the nodes for future memory-creating connections. This is a wonderful way to LEARN new stuff!
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While we are learning we can either start imagining the walls turning into chocolate filled waffles, or we can somehow relate the material we are learning to something familiar. Picture it like this: If you move to a new house, a new neighborhood, you don’t know anyone or anything in this neighborhood. You don’t know everything about your house, which faucets work the best, which tub leaks and where bugs get in. After you live there for a long time you know the house. You know its layout like the back of your hand. You know almost everything about it. It has become familiar. When something changes, such as a door with a lock on it, you are not used to it. You have to find something to remind you about the lock on the door so you can remember it.
This same thing applies to learning. There are two basic principles in the story about the house that can be applied to learning. The use of metaphors and similes is the main tactic that I use for learning in school. I try to compare something that I am learning to something that I already know, or something that is familiar to me. For example, if I am learning about dogs and their behavior, I would try to relate this to the behavior of MY dog so I remember the information with ease. The act of creating a connection is really not that complicated.
I would recommend writing down anything and everything that you think you need to remember. This creates the beginning of a connection. You have translated it from either sight or sound into a motor function, writing, and stored it as a hard-copy. This creates the beginning of information retention. Once you have written the item (or typed it, whichever you prefer) all you have to do is find some connection. Whether it is something that the teacher did or said that made you laugh, something that makes you cry from 5 years ago, anything really. Things that have high emotions, positive or negative, usually work best for this type of memory forming activity. Find something to relate your new knowledge to that brings back vivid memories linked to vivid emotions.
The second piece in the story about the house is repetition. According to some study that I cannot find the reference to, it takes about 21 days to form a habit. If you put child-locks on a cupboard door, get a new job, a new, house, whatever, you will notice that if you don’t really think about it, you sometimes start going to the wrong house, wrong job, or you rip open the cupboard door without thinking. It takes time and repetition to form these habits. So, the more you think about, write about, learn about, see, hear, and otherwise interact with new information, the more familiar it becomes to your brain. This will help you keep this new knowledge.
Another useful tool is to use the knowledge. If you are trying to learn vocabulary words, use them in your life. Even if you are just talking to yourself in your car on the way to school or work, the more you use it the more you remember what it means.
Well, that was quite a lot of information to digest. I hope it makes sense and is useful to you! Comment with your own learning tips and stories and share this with your friends!!!
Thanks for reading!
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Nathan Atkinson
