Monday, January 25, 2010

I don't remember where'd they go!

Missing us, Pangeelapongers? :D

Yeah we as the bloggers and the readers miss reading each other's blog post.. we've been busy with exams! Right after the holiday we had our first semester exams. We've been studying day 'n' nite. and i really meant it when i say night! There are some nights when we stay awake the whole night, go for mamak at 3am for a cup of teh tarik and study again! can you imagine how hardcore we studied?

Anyway, when we were studying, we faced a lot of trouble understanding every freaking notes. In APMS, my course, we had to sit for 5 papers. 2 on business and 3 more on Psychology. Psychology, Interesting, Very very interesting but it is obviously not an easy subject to score. Understanding the notes wasnt that easy, especially cognitive psychology. And yeah! 50% of the things we heard in class went to our echoic store and decayed so we had to restudy everything. and after looking through the notes, the wordings went into our iconic store, and decayed too! So practically nothing much went into the short term memory,
and of course long term memory too. I dont get it! Why did most psychologist comic say that elephants have got good memory. Wonder whether is it true. Even in "The Jungle Book" (1967), the elephants that Mowgli(the little boy from the cartoon, there's only one boy in the entire movie) went marching with, mentioned that an elephant never forgets! but i wonder why?!!

Finally I get why they say an elephant never forget! Elephants follow the same paths and even hand down genetic memories of directions and places grounds across generations. Cool right? better in direction than some of us that live and grew in KL. lol. Wonder how they've got good memory? They read! books on "Improve your memory for dummies"

Simple, as for human, just read la! read, read and read till everything you read goes into your short term memory! Easier said than done right? Even after reading it once or twice, you can still forget every single thing. Like you totally dont remember every freakin thing you read. Even your mama and papa will be pissed cuz they see you studying day and night and you tell them you dont remember what you studied...
So what can an elephant do? Elephant naturally have good memories. And who cares if they've got bad memories, all they need to remember is the same route back and forth. But for us human?! We can only remember 7 things +/- 2! so 9 things the most! what can you do? chunk little things into one? That's can't probably be in the short term memory. How to get it into the long term memory?

One good way is to use mnemonics. Encoding information based on large existing knowledge base. It takes up a lot of time.
Of course there are other ways of remembering but it can never last. Auditory, Visual and Semantic code can help us to code information in the short term memory but not long term.

So how to get our info into the long term memory? we gotta rehearse, and code them with adequate retrieval cues. Whatever way that helps you to remember. If you think looking at yourself in the mirror can make you remember, stick the yellow sticky notes on your mirror. If that doesn't work, stick it on yourself. It helps :D


Again, it's easier said than done. It helps if you put in more effort and time!

Since it's the beginning of second sem, dont slack and start studying from the first day of class! :)

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