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Ask Slashdot: How Can I Improve My Memory For Study?
First time accepted submitter Sensei_knight writes "How serendipitous! Today I see Slashdot also has an article linking caffeine to long-term memory, but I digress. Recently I returned to college in my 30s, after battling a childhood sleep disorder, and I now discover staying awake might be the least of my troubles. Now that I failed a few classes I'm trying to analyze and overcome the causes of this recent disaster. Two things are obvious: First, it takes me way too long to complete tasks (as if suffering from time dilation) — tests take me approximately twice the amount of time to finish [and the amount of time it takes to study and do homework is cumulative and unsustainable]. Secondly, I just can't seem to remember a whole lot. I know sleep and memory are very closely related, perhaps that's why I have never been able to commit the times tables to memory. My research on the subject of memory has not been very fruitful, therefore I want to ask for input into which angle/direction I should look into next. As for cognitive speed, I have completely drawn a blank."
1. Have you gotten treatment, as an *adult*, for your sleep disorder? (e.g. overnight sleep study, etc.)
2. Do you follow all the best practices for sleep -- e.g. sleep routine, e.g.only use sleeping area for sleep, avoid caffeine, no TV in bed, etc.?
It seems to me you need to address the sleep issue first if it's still ongoing.
but I forgot.
go to a school there is about skills not just test cramming
First see your physician for a a checkup and make sure it's nothing like Thyroid, diabetes or something phsycial. Then see a psychologist (your doc probably can refer you) and see if they have some advice - and they may refer you to a psychiatrist for medical treatment.
You could have a number of issues from undiagnosed dislexia or depression - depression really screws with learning and memory and being depressed doesn't ncessarilty mean you are bed ridden crying your eyes out.
Repetition is the key.
One thing I recently learned was that controlled breathing while studying really improves your focus and definitely improved my retention. A guy showed me how to breath in and out with slow breaths 5 secs on the inhale and exhale first through the mouth and then after i got the timing down, the nose.
From what I have heard, it is the same type of technique used by snipers.
If you can't do that, then maybe University isn't for you.
Bottom line: not everyone is able to do what most other people can do (hence "dis-abled"), and -- speaking from experience -- must make the best of your limitations.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You're asking the wrong audience, unless there are people here who have experienced similar troubles. You need to talk to qualified specialists.
The general advice seems to be: eat healthy, regular aerobic exercise, get the right amount of high-quality sleep, and do lots of memory practice (get the right amount of sleep for you -- my memory suffers if I sleep too much)
In your case, general advice probably isn't adequate
This is what our society has turned into.
I'm in a similar boat as you only older. I've found that wrote memorization actually does not stick but if you have to then writing the information down over and over again will eventually help. There is no way around longer study times for those of us in our later years - we are not sponges like in our youth. What works for me is relating the item to be memorized with it's application and how it works in a system. This is natural and why you see historically lots of older members be community leaders and arbiters over internal conflict.
Hopefully at the end of the course you will use this broader long view perspective to your advantage and your upper division courses will value and reward that insight but you have to get the foundation down first. Good luck.
Nootropics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic
Not sure if it's the right band-aid for you. Treat the sleep disorder first.
check out rewrite your wetware, a developers guide.
Also try reading material last thing at night, over and over. Then it's often just "there" when you need it.
Good old fashioned brain teasers can help a lot. I used to do the cross hatch logic problems published by Dell magazines. Crossword puzzles, maybe even sudoku. Thing is, your sleep disorder is probably a major factor in your memory issues - our brains commit short term memory to long term while we sleep, and any sleep disorder that disrupts that process will have an adverse impact on your memory.
If you want to try the drug route, I use phosphodatyl choline supplements during crunch time. That's more for people with the occasional ADD symptom, though.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
From your description of your challenges, it sounds like you may have a learning disability.
I know from the experiences of my son, who has a written output disorder, that schools are willing and able to make accommodations for students who take longer to do their work-- but only if a diagnosis of some sort is in hand.
As an educator myself, I also know that instructors and school administrators want their students to succeed.
Is it possible that you have an issue with reading comprehension?
Additionally, try to focus on repetition. Repetition is the key.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Back in high school and later in college (equivalent), when taking tests, I was 120% concentrated, and five minutes after the test was over, I couldn't even remember whether I'd written my name on the paper. Or anything, really. Almost total test-related amnesia. Funny how it works.
2) Use smells to associate memories with. When you smell the smell, it will help you remember what you associated with it.
3) Use story chains associations - associate all ten digits with objects, and then to remember a twenty digit number, remember a story about twenty digit's associated objects.
4) Controversial, there are claims that caffeine and adderall (ADD medication) can aid memory. But there are side effects....
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Have you been tested for any learning disabilities? If not, I'd advise you to check with your university's disability office and get checked out. If you do have LD, they will acccomodate it.
I guess the real question is under what conditions are you able to perform well? I think you will need to identify those conditions and focus upont working in those conditions. You may need to work with teachers to develop a schedule which you can work under.
You just may not be able to do well under a normal classroom conditions, and you will need to address that. Good teachers will help where they can and bad teachers will be inflexible, you may need to avoid those.
There are plenty of chemical/herbal compounds that you can take to improve cognitive abilities. However, aside from sleep with respect to controllable factors the absolute most powerful contributors to cognitive abilities are your diet and exercise. Both eating low quality (unhealthy) food as well as a sedentary lifestyle degrade cognitive performance immensely.
My advise to you would be to ditch McRotten and visit your local gym regularly. As a side benefit you just might find yourself sleeping better too.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Repetition is the key.
Repetition is the key.
Repetition is the key.
There are different parts of the brain; one which is careful, considerate, and can deal with new tasks but is slow. The other is faster, but sloppier and harder to train. This is instinct. When the two of these work in harmony, the results are great. Train your instinct by many attempts via your considerate mind, with various amounts of attention and varying inputs, but with measurable correctness. Use your deliberate mind to do a quick sanity check on what your instinctual mind presents, but sharpen ways to judge quickly.
Gameplay can be good for this. For instance, playing solitaire on the computer. Sure, solitaire isn't a valuable life skill of itself, but you can exercise your brain and build confidence in your learning systems with it. Action games also provide this, in varying degrees.
Of course, nutrition is also important.
Rail it, all the cool ADHD kids are.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If you are in your 30's and cannot remember the multiplication tables, you need to see a professional, not ask for help here. You need a physician to check for general medical conditions, and then a specialist such as a neurologist to check for neurologic disorders. The fact that you asked this question here also may mean you have a problem with judgement and may need psychologic evaluation.
...never memorize something you can look up (after a reporter asked for Einstein's phone number and Einstein retrieved the phone book).
Obviously, doing something not-blatantly-unhealthy is probably a good idea; but amphetamines and modafinil are the tools of choice among students these days in need of a performance enhancement.
If Modafinil has any serious downsides, they certainly are subtle ones. Unlike stimulants, which leave you tired but jittery, it just makes you not tired. The amphetamines, of course, are to be treated with respect and moderation(oral doses, ideally sustained release, you aren't trying to get high here); but can, somewhat surprisingly, sharpen the hell out of your focus. Just be careful. In my experience, they Don't improve the targeting of your focus. If they help you maintain intense focus on a piece of work for far longer than would otherwise be possible, great. If they help you maintain intense focus on completing 100% of the achievements in Dishonored, less useful; but they'll do either depending on the situation you put yourself in.
I have a similar issue with not being able to sleep and not being able to focus on the task at hand thus taking much longer to finish things and for me it boiled down to the following 1) Get your body clock in order. Sleep and eat at fixed times as much as possible. Also, rest plentifully throughout the day 2) Eat the correct kind of food like fruits etc. Eating fast food for me has caused havoc on my stomach thus leading to sleep issues. Also, I reduced my sugar/candy/soda intake a lot. 3) Exercise. This is right up there with eat and sleep. 4) I realized that I was not finishing tasks because on some level I was not really interested in doing them. This you need to just do some thinking on what your goals are and are you really interested in doing what you are doing etc. 5) I also realized that I wasn't doing fun things enough that I would then be able to do my mundane work items. So on a daily or maybe at least weekly basis, participate in a fun/hobby activity. It is very refreshing. I am planning to buy a PS4 or XBOX for this soon. 6) I find that blocking out external noises and stimuli while working helps me focus on things. This along with making a log of what I am doing (learning Emacs org mode for this) helps me remember things much better. I bought noise cancelling headphones and turn off most notifications that are not important to me during the day as much as possible. 7) Most importantly, I realized focus/concentration is not something you build in a day or week. It takes a lot of time. It is literally like developing a muscle. You need to feed it right and work hard on it to sharpen it. Remember, you need a lifestyle change, not a quick fix. There is a lot of interest recently in mindfulness you can take a look at that. Hope this helps.
Use this over the counter supplement called "Choline". It has absolutely no known side-effects and it really works.
Educational Psychology department at the local U about study strategies/study skills. Usually these are geared toward teachers (how to help their students to develop strategies) but sometimes they're even geared toward students at said U (how to study in college, and so on).
These aren't classes about how to improve your brain, or about theory. They're very meat-and-potatoes: ways to organize note-taking, ways to organize reading activity and coordinate it with note-taking, ways to prepare for exams systematically and so on. What seems a problem of recall may be a problem of cognitive data architecture—not "it's not in there" but rather "you're not putting it in there in a way that lends itself to retrieval later on."
I don't know your case or just how hard it is for you, but it's not uncommon for a broad cross-section of students to have many of the same complaints, and often the remedy is to learn differently (i.e. different, time-tested, sample-studied methods for effectively acquiring, organizing, and storing information) rather than to try to "do mental exercises" or improve some immanent property of themselves.
And it's not common sense—they get down into things like how to lay out a page of notes, in geographical regions of the page; how to key words to paragraphs; how to note pages and where, etc. Very mechanical, technique-style stuff. You may find it helpful.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There has been recent research in brain-disease treating drugs being good for healthy people. Investigate the use of anticonvulsants as well as Parkingson's- and Alzheimer's-treating drugs, as well as nootropics. I would recommend you explore off-label use of these drugs with a psychiatrist wiling to prescribe them based on research studies. Also, you should get a sleep study done and maybe consider a CPAP machine if you are having trouble breathing in your sleep. Ambien and other sleep-inducing drugs may also work, although with all of these chemical solutions you might want to consider the risk of dependency, side-effects, and long-term damage that may be caused.
http://www.harrylorayne.com/
Lastly, don't be discouraged. We can make incremental and even revolutionary improvements at any age.
Good luck!
Take time to pray, and learn to be disciplined. Wake up at the same time, every day, and make sure it's early enough to take a relaxed shower (shown to improve cognitive function, particularly creativity, perhaps because of how you come out of dreams, while waking). These things have helped me, with similar issues.
“I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” - Martin Luther
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." - 1 Timothy 2:17
I cannot emphasize the prayer part, enough. It seems counter-intuitive, and I am not trying to be religulous, here, but, as Jesus said, "wisdom is proved by its result."
Follow Joe Dragon's lead and go to a school where basic literacy isn't required.
Contrary to popular belief, sex, or more correctly, ejaculation isn't good for you. Sure it might feel like the best thing in the world for all of 10 seconds, but afterwards you will feel far more tired and emotionally distant and negative. For each subsequent ejaculation you will feel even more tired and even more emotionally negative. Depending on how old and healthy you are, excessive ejaculation can lead to excessive tiredness and emotional depression (although the effect is usually temporary).
How does this relate to your concern? Ejaculation has a direct effect on your energy levels and thus has the same effect as sleep deprevation, again depending on frequency of ejaculation and your age/health.
If you don't believe me try ejaculating 3 times what you normally do in 1 day, then tell me I'm wrong. For further proof, try the exact opposite. Stop ejaculating for at least 2-4 weeks, then tell me your energy, sleep and memory haven't improved significantly.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
applied at the temples works wonders...
10) Take breaks. For every hour (or possibly less) of study, take a 15-20 min break. 9) Sleep: NEVER pull an all nighter, start your studying in advance (small bits, earlier vs. big chunks last minute) 8) Re-write: take notes in class, and re-write notes in words that you understand (explain things to yourself) 7) Draw: make diagrams in your notes 6) Talk: talk to others, explain what your learned 5) Questions: write notes in the form of questions, then answer your questions (this helps for studying later) 4) Good health: exercise and eat healthy to support your body in keeping up with the demands and stresses of learning. 3) Emotions: Try and relate things to your life in a meaningful way. You're more likely to remember if it has personal meaning to you. 2) Use your body: make an effort to keep an open body posture when learning to ensure you are "open" to the info 1) Don't memorize - UNDERSTAND. Wtf? If you make an effort to really understand what you're learning you won't need to memorize, it will just come (kind of like how striving for good health brings on weight loss naturally. Those who do the action experience the consequences).
...but you'd probably just forget it. So why bother?...
How much of your class is really about memorization? Maybe you should try reading "Getting things done" by Paul Allen instead.
http://www.davidco.com/
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
First of all, I would ask you if you're very interested in the subject you are studying? If it's your first year, chances you are doing all your GEs and some of them can be hard and boring as hell. If it is a boring class, chances are your memory isn't to blame, because everyone reads and remembers boring stuff poorly. I speak from experience. After being a straight A student in high school, I went to one of the top 20 schools in the nation, only to realize I was failing after a year or so going there. I couldn't wake up for classes, I slept in most of the day, I couldn't pay attention, etc. For a student who prized himself based upon grades, I wasn't feeling great about myself. Luckily I found out about the student psychological services. Turns out I was suffering from a mild depression and ADD. ADD? How could that be possible, I'd been a straight A student and never ran around the classroom, though I did like to blurt comments out at my teachers when I felt so inspired. I was suffering from ADD, inattentive (daydreamer) non hyperactive type. The depression stemmed from my poor performance in school. I was given different meds for the ADD until we finally found one that worked, and I took it for about a year to get on track. Now, to the point, I ended up in the most awesome major- Cognitive Science. I found it insane and awesome all at once, it engaged my brain, I loved going to school then! I was able to stop taking the meds altogether because the material enthralled me that much! I've been able to stay off the meds for 9 years altogether because the material was that interesting. Two points- get yourself checked out at the school student psych services center. You may be suffering from depression, ADD, Insomnia, any other myriad of conditions they might be able to help with, sometimes just with techniques and not pills. Secondly, find a major you love not one you think that will love you in turns of money. Good luck.
Different people learn differently. Consider the possibility that you are simply not using the learning style best suited to you. There are tools to help with this.
The sleep thing as well, obviously. But consider that you may not have a fruitful approach to learning in general.
It sounds like you may have an undiagnosed learning disability.
Many of the big universities and colleges in the United States provide accommodations for students with learning disabilities, such as being allowed to take 2x regular time to finish exams and quizzes, as well as some kind of support regarding the doing of homework and studying. To obtain such accommodations, you would have to go to your institution's "learning disability center" (unfortunately, there is no standardized name for it), fill out some paperwork and get examined/tested to determine if indeed you do have a disability, and if so, what accommodations would be appropriate/fair to be given you. They will probably also be able to advise you on the kind of medial treatment you might need.
Having mostly overcome similar symptoms onset from different causes, I can suggest what worked for me: Repetition as a primary strategy for learning.
I no longer bother trying to grasp the minutia on my first pass, I use it and a couple of subsequent passes to establish familiarity. Candidly, I can barely describe the material as a whole after a single read. But the more times I cover the material, the more firmly the fine details become lodged in my memory and my test scores are back above 95%.
This replaces my earlier method of carefully understanding and ingesting material in one or two passes; and because I'm not reading carefully from the outset it doesn't take much more time than the original method. The first few times you try this, expect to worry if the material will ever stick in your memory, but usually I find that 10 fast passes separated by a few minutes spent doing other things makes me the most knowledgable student in every class.
You need to sleep enough, eat well, and exercise.. After that, I recommend reading Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. It's chock full of research, great read.
Your brain is like any other muscle: the more you do with it, the more you are able to do with it. Trouble remembering? Start CONSCIOUSLY working on developing your memory by CONSCIOUSLY working on memorizing stuff. It matters not what because it matters not whether you lift 10 pounds of feathers or 10 pounds of lead 50 times. The effort at memorization is what your brain needs. I memorized the Book of Proverbs, 1 chapter at a time. It took me 6-7 years, but there it is. Patient, persistant self-discipline (i.e., self-training) develops the skill.
Cranky educator.
Forget that shit! It's totally worth lacking memory in favor of the sex.
The guy can't memorize times tables. That is not just random "memorization", there are patterns and other contextual clues such as relationships to prime numbers, etc.
I imagine he has difficulty learning new words, terms, acronyms, etc.
That level of memorization is absolutely a core requirement for education and understanding.
How can you understand complex concepts if you can't remember the simple ones?
Understanding is the key to an efficient and well organized memory system. Unprocessed data takes more effort to store, the more you understand and can interconnect what you know the more stable and long lasting the connections.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Bullshit. I teach at a university and frequently have students that have trouble with their exams. What the OP should do is go see the Accommodated Services department (or equivalent) at his/her university and see what accommodations can be made. I frequently have students that are able to write exams in separate rooms, on a computer (if it helps them to type rather than write), and with extra time and breaks in the middle of the exam. If someone wants to do a university degree, there is no reason they should be unable to do so.
These are just my own speculation, so take it with a grain of salt.
First, avoid memorizing anything. Understand how the concept works and why. If you know this you don't need to memorize all the little cases around [concept] because you can answer any question about it by thinking about how it works.
example: I don't need to memorize IV means 4 and VI means 6 if I understand how roman numerals work.
Second, you can improve memory recall by associating a memory with as many references as possible. Mnemonics are an example of this by linking a work or phrase to the concept you are memorizing.
examples: I memorize a friends phone number by the pattern it makes on the keypad. I associate the new client's name with the smell of their perfume.
As a person who has gone back to school in his late 20's, I have struggled with some of what you describe. I'm going to just list out a few things I have done or ways I act to help improve my cognitive performance and memory.
Firstly, memory is learned, not innate. Many of the world memory game finalists and champions are ordinary people who started practicing the Method of Loci (Memory Palace, other names as well) as a memorization technique and a couple years later are placing in memory games. I cannot possibly overstate the importance of this technique. With it, I pass hard memorization classes like Orgo and Physiology with straight A's. Without it, I fail. Curiously, I found that once I started using this technique, my overall memory improved considerably.
OK, now a laundry list, in no particular order.
*) Take less classes. If stuff takes more time, allocate accordingly.
*) Nutrition is important. If you are deficient in B12 (many adults are slightly or moderately deficient in this) it will severely affect your cognitive ability and memory. Try daily supplementation with cyanocobalamin for a month. Also vitamin C, as well as eating a balanced diet. Vitamin D supplementation can help quite a bit, and some people (including myself) experience benefit from CoQ10 supplementation.
*) What you eat is important as FUCK. Whatever food you put in your mouth, will take blood away from the brain. Eat simple, nutricious, easily-digested food for breakfast and lunch. If you have bacon and eggs for breakfast, that''s going to suck all the blood out of your brain and you won't be able to think. Try yogurt or smoothies instead, add raisins and nuts. Similarly, if you have a ham sandwich for lunch, your body is going to be digesting that instead of your class material. Don't do that. Eat minimally through the day in order to maximize cognitive function.
*) Hunger is predatory. Being slightly hungry increases memory and processing speed, at least for me. Experiment.
*) Stay away from sugar. Sugar is a drug that makes you fat, dumb, and happy. Minimize sugar intake as much as possible. Also stay away from artificial sweeteners; as bad as sugar is for your brain, it is a lot better than aspartame / nutrasweet / phenylalanine.
*) Eat a well-balanced diet, minimizing processed foods and meats. Eat fruits, vegetables and beans. Some people find it is a good idea to stay well away from grains like rice and wheat. Experiment with your diet and find out what works for you. Universally, processed foods are bad, though.
*) Exercise! This is a huge boost for making your brain work better. If you walk for 20 minutes every morning, your brain will work much better all day.
*) This goes without saying, but stay away from marijuana. It takes several days for the effects of marijuana to fade from your cognitive faculties. If you smoke MJ, save it for academic breaks. (NOTE: plenty of people will disagree with me. No, I will not cite a source because I have none. But if you smoke MJ, stop for a while.)
*) Stay away from alcohol. This drug also takes several days for your brain to recover from. Again, no scientific source, just my personal experience. If you are young and dumb, EtOH and MJ can be fine every night, but when you need to maximise every iota of brain performance that is a different story.
*) Talk to your professors. Also talk to your school's psychiatric counselling. You may be able to get extra time to complete tests if you do suffer from memory or cognitive impairment. Unless you are planning to take the MCAT or GRE or something, most professors are more than happy to make lots of allowances for struggling students. Since you are an older student, I expect teachers will actually be even happier to help you. Most teachers really like having the maturity and motivation of older students in the classroom.
*) Stay away from TV and video games. These interfere with learning. If you spend the day in lectures then spend
If you are still battling sleep problems, try reducing your exposure to light (especially blue light) in the evening. Most particularly, pull yourself away from the computer or the big-screen TV. Use dimmed incandescent bulbs (less blue light) to illuminate the paper you're working with. If you must use a computer, set your monitor for the warmest color balance you can select, and turn it down as far as you can without eyestrain.
Avoiding mentally taxing activities late at night is also helpful, but probably incompatible with college.
Try melatonin, available OTC at least here in the US. Your body uses it as a signal for sleep. It's effective orally, and it's essentially impossible to overdose, but you should try to stick with the smallest amount that's effective.
Unless they are not bright enough to do so.
Which would pretty much cause all of the symptoms mentioned above too.
That's bullshit. I started out with similar troubles, and just had to learn better time management. Skip the time-consuming questions, focus on the fast questions, then go back and work out as much of the time-consuming questions as possible in the time alloted.
Few students do this.
Except that it has been found that one of the single largest predictors of success in the study of math specifically (and I do believe this translates to many other areas) has been whether a person believes in talent and abilities vs learned skills.
That is to say, it was found that people who believe math to be a talent perform worst than people who believe it is a skill that can be mastered with effort.
So if you really think it comes down to "abilities" then just go flip on the TV, you probably aren't going to find abilities in anything if you aren't willing to work at getting them.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Firstly, ignore the naysayers who say you aren't cut out for College/University. These are the same people who would have tried to dissuade other intellectual luminaries who also had trouble in primary/secondary schools and colleges/universities. Just because you are slower on the curve does not mean you can't obtain a college degree/education. Good on you for admitting your troubles and seeking help.
That being said, I think the obvious answer here is to try and seek professional help to address your cognitive/learning/sleep issues whether that be a psychologist/psychiatrist/doctor or other health care professional. I had similar issues with ADHD and concentration in all levels of school and, while it was difficult, I did overcome these challenges and eventually graduated from college. It's great that you are being proactive and trying to address your learning disability in a constructive manner.
Lastly, a quote: "Don't let the turkeys keep you from soaring from the eagles."
Try cerebrolysin. it works great for me! http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/18dvy9/anyone_try_cerebrolysin/
I knew of one, except I can't remember it anymore :(
during exams. Something quick hitting, like 5 & 6 carbon types.
This.
Learning and memorization is like any other skill, you need to practice it. Through High School I had to constantly go over material multiple times (up to 10) before I could remember what I needed for tests. In University, I got it down to a science. I needed three days of study for each course to prepare for exams. I needed to go over the material three times on three different days before it would finally sink in. Of course, having good notes makes a big difference too.
Personally, I found that I took in more material if I am slightly drowsy when I was in class (i.e. almost napping). I find that if I am fully awake, my brain is too busy thinking about other things which gets in the way of learning. Fortunately, I am at the point in my career and education where memorization isn't as important as being able to apply the knowledge.
BTW, you might want to try taking an online course. I took several when finishing up my Masters degree. They require less memorization and more practical skills and the exams/tests tend to be open book timed. However, if you take online courses there is less socialization. So, if you want to meet people, make sure that you also take some campus courses.
AND I went back to college as well, but I am even older than you.
My disorder has been under control for decades now, but I found similar issues re: studying/retaining info when going back to school.
All I can say is that I found that daily exercise to get my heart up to 2X normal for 10-20 minutes really seemed to help tremendously.
I have an elliptical at home and used that.
If you don't have something like that, consider some other exercises to get your blood moving and in turn help your brain get nourishment.
It won't happen overnight, but made a difference for me at least.
I like microcars
Believing "brightness" to be an intrinsic character trait is a psychological crutch for those who view their intelligence as their only redeeming quality. A large proportion of the variety of cognitive impairments can be overcome, many even cured, and people can and do get smarter. OP should be praised for embarking on a serious quest for self-improvement. If only those sitting on their laurels would do so as well.
Someone had to do it.
Lions mane mushrooms, gingko biloba, l-carnitine, tDCS therapy
I am a cognitive scientist (Ph.D.) who studies the workings of human memory. The number one thing you can do improve your learning is to QUIZ YOURSELF.
Every time you retrieve some information from memory, you STRENGTHEN that information in your memory, making it easier to retrieve again in the future. So when you study new information, DON'T just re-read it multiple times. Read it, then quiz yourself (try to remember the info on your own), wait a while, quiz yourself some more, quiz yourself again later, etc.
Key terms: "testing effect" or "retrieval practice". For example, here's just one peer-reviewed psychology publication that summarizes relevant scientific research, and some implications for education: Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J.D. (2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 181-210. [PDF]
Sun Tzu's The Art of War: "In difficult ground, press on; On hemmed-in ground, use subterfuge; In death ground, fight." I say fight since you appear to be on death ground academically.
While there are a lot of funny posts to this request, there are some real techniques that help improve one's retention. In no particular order:
1) Get ample sleep and have a regular schedule for sleep
2) Increase the amount of exercise you do (improves blood flow to the brain).
3) Minimize use of alcohol and other recreational drugs
4) Take handwritten notes while in class and while studying (notes must be handwritten, not typed)
5) Drink caffeinated beverages, but not to excess -- too much has a detrimental effect (ADHD meds work even better than caffeine, but require a prescription to be legal)
6) Don't cram for exams, instead study every day at the same time.
7) Leave time to read novels (studies show that reading novels stimulate areas of the brain used for recall in other situations)
One thing that is fairly common in the above is consistency, whether with sleep, study times, etc. Shakespeare said "Consistency, what a rare gem, though art." When it comes to study habits, that is definitely true. Regardless of one's recall ability, the above suggestions, when used consistently, will improve one's capabilities.
As stated above, Exercise is probably the easiest way to awaken your mind and body. Energetic sex is a bonus.
Exercise will clear and sharpen your mind and prepare your body for sleep. If sleep and stresses are an issue, I have found both herbal remedies (Like sleepeze) and meditation - I used to 'do' Astral Travel to add some fun, although essentially bollocks - it improves your imagination, your ability to create scenarios and force you to remember objects and locations. All improving your brains functions. As a side note it makes cashing in your wank-bank memories more rewarding.
But this all leads up to not relying on parrot-fashion learning. Rarely does vocational study require intense parrot-fashion study - it's the easy way out for young mind - prep for an exam and pass it, never use it again (generally) - or if possible keep aspect for later reference (Doctors have to be able to do this, just so they know of the existence of things to diagnose properly later on, good IT people also have this ability: to remember the contents as it were, without full details, just enough to know to look it up later.
You need to know WHY you need to know what you are expected to learn. Once of my terms at uni was mostly maths - PURE maths - 8hrs Monday 4hrs Tuesday, APPLIED Maths 4hrs Wednesday and 8 hrs Thursday. Friday was an optional Physics seminar, but without the Friday - there was no way my under experienced brain could link together the weeks workings....the fact that it was optional was a critical factor in what sort of student turned up; sure we had the whizz kids who could recite everything and pass it easy and didn't have to attend Friday - but without exception, come hard stuff a few years later - AI, 3D rendering and associated calc, functional programming and even more abstract things like compression & artifact removal the people who did well were the people who attended the optional seminar; the people who had been able to link information with knowledge with reason with application.
Do not be afraid to interact and ask questions about the usage of the knowledge imparted to you. This will help you apply it and keep you focused during testing time.
Choose the right tool for the job. The right tool for this job is not Slashdot.
Go see a doctor. A good GP will be able to point you to a specialist who may be able to better pinpoint exactly why you're having these issues and help you sort them out.
Do your research, by all means--you'll need to be your own advocate--but there are people who dedicate their lives to figuring this sort of thing out. Talk to them, not us.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I found using flash cards can be really helpful both for memory and for speed. Also because each unit is small it forces you to keep on task which might help for the time dilation. For the mac I like iFlash, bit dated but works well.
There are a plethora of studies out there tying memory and cognitive function to various things, including diet, sleep, type of learning, etc... Being in my 30's I can empathise with the problem, I just don't seem to pick things up as quickly as I did in my teens and 20's. It's not drastic, but it is noticable.
Some foods have been tied to cognitive function. Read up a little bit here and here. Or do some googling for some more stuff. It's interesting that the traditional american diet of burger and fries is actually a hindrance to memory and brain function. Healthy eating is very important to every component of your life, I just wish I new that when I was in my early 20's.
Exercise is another thing that fuels the brain. I find that when I stop biking/running, my mood goes to crap and I have a harder time sleeping. As my exercise level goes up, everything else gets better. Plenty of research here to back it up.
Different people also learn things in different ways. Looking at learning styles may help you figure out what works best for you. One thing I learned in undergrad is you don't really understand something until you can:
In that same class, the professor told us that if we knew our stuff, there was no way he could trick us. I've applied that same test to those things I really want to remember, and I've found it works great. Repetition in Math never really stuck with me, but when I was finally able to reason about what the equation was actually doing, and understand the strengths and weaknesses (getting into applied math here), I found it was much easier to comprehend and work with.
You could spin your wheels for days trying to figure what works best for you, or to discover that there may be something else going on that needs treatment (i.e. ADD or something) before you're able to progress. It may be worth talking to your primary care and getting a referral to the appropriate specialist.
Today I see Slashdot also has an article linking caffeine to long-term memory, but I digress.
You haven't even said anything yet, so what exactly are you digressing from?
Try Modifinil or Adrafinil. Both promote wakefulness and help with productivity. For the memory, consider a nootropic, such as Piracetam, Noopept, or Oxiracetam.
. . . that legend. It's not even sure he said that and he certainly wasn't talking about his own phone number. If you followed that stupid rule, you'd spend your entire life looking stuff up. Did you memorize e=mc^2? Or do you look it up every time?
First of all, google is your friend. This is something that has been studied by many people, and many effective are available for you to use. For example, I happen to like the Method of loci which I use to memorize the main points of speeches and lists.
Different people like different methods, and there's a buffet of effective methods to choose from. Again, google is your friend.
That being said, here's the psychological answer:
If you want to increase your long term memory, you start with the theory of memory. Our brains remember things that are important to us, which means that either the information has perceived value or emotional content.
Emotional content in lectures is hard to get in a college setting - it's an aspect that good lecturers use - but you can use tricks to increase your retention. Get together with some friends and make up a "game" of reviewing the information. Play Jeopardy, make up funny physics stories, try to make puns from equations... anything that causes you and your group to laugh or think deeply will do. For example, how would "Ming the Merciless" destroy the Earth using magnetic fields (from your recent physics lecture)? Analyze it tongue-in-cheek with your friends to see if the idea is viable.
High value is anything that will get you towards your goals, but you can choose your goals. Pick an appropriate goal and you will sop up information like a sponge. Imagine starting your own company... what's your dream situation? All the MBA classes you are taking will now have new meaning: everything you are taught will cling to that goal like ornaments on a tree. Resolve to be an amateur astronomer who discovers a new comet, a teacher who wins "teacher of the year", a writer that wins a Hugo award... dream big and convince yourself that the information will get you towards that goal.
Learning is actually fun, and it's something your brain is evolved to do. As a consequence, and as a survival trait we get pleasure from learning. If you can tap into this basic function, you'll find that learning is both fun and easy.
There have been many memory courses and systems taught over the last couple of centuries. I personally liked, "How to Develop a Super Power Memory," by Harry Lorayne. It's old but good, and you only have to read it once. (!!!) http://www.amazon.com/How-Develop-Super-Power-Memory/dp/0811901815
There are many others: One of my favorites for studying is, "Brainbooster" by Robert Finkle. It helps organize your memory system specifically for studying. http://www.amazon.com/New-Brainbooster-Hours-Learning-Remembering/dp/0802773524/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389726169&sr=1-6&keywords=brainboosters
I have over thirty how-to books on memory and learning that revolve around mnemonics. They all teach pretty much the same thing,, and some of them may appeal to you more than others, so check around. The books by Tony Buzan are pretty good, and some of them teach skills besides memory that apply to study.
The book, "Find Your Focus Zone," by Lucy Palladino is terrific, and includes insights into how the brain works and how to make it work better. http://www.yourfocuszone.com/
A lot of people don't study well because they don't take care of their body. I highly recommend, "The Four Hour Body," by Timothy Ferriss. As for learning, His book, "The Four-Hour Chef" is more about learning than cooking. (Tim did a show for Discovery called, "Trial by Fire" which followed him while he learned martial arts skills (Yabasume) equivalent to 20 years' ordinary practice in only about 4 months. He has a background in neuro science, so he seems to have access to a lot of cool resources.) http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Body-Uncommon-Incredible-Superhuman/dp/030746363X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389726764&sr=1-1&keywords=4+hour+body+by+timothy+ferris
Again, the connection between brain and body; "Change your Brain-Change your Body" by Daniel Amen. This is very much about Brain Fitness, but also syncs the health and fitness connection. http://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Brain-Body-Always/dp/0307463583
For fun read, "Moonwalking with Einstein," by Joshua Foer. It is an overview of the culture of people who train their memory for serious competition. http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remembering-Everything/dp/0143120530/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389726982&sr=1-1&keywords=walking+with+einstein
Good luck.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
As would circumstances that some people can't concentrate under. I'm one of those people. I hate human voices or random sounds when I'm working on something. I pretty much wear headphones to do any real work otherwise it's a very frustrating situation for me. To see me "out of my element" you'd think I'm some kind of idiot, the reality is that I know I have a problem but it's not one most people can relate to.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/01/13/1316209/experiment-shows-caffeine-boosts-long-term-memory
Read Seth Roberts' blog: http://blog.sethroberts.net/. It's focused on how to improve sleep and how to improve brain functioning.
Some of his findings:
-a teaspoon of honey before bed improves sleep
-eating more fat, such as butter, improves brain functioning (measured by reaction time)
-magic dots improve focus (make a mark on paper every time you complete 5 minutes on a task)
There's lots more. It's worth a read.
As per subject: use it!
Would you say the key is repetition?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The three pillars of good health are:
1) Nutrition. Make sure you're giving your body energy.
2) Exercise. Keeps your body capable. Cleans out bad stuff.
3) Sleep. Gives your body time to rebuild itself.
Once you have those figured out, then the answer is practice, and it will improve. Personal anecdote: I used to have horrible memory skills until I memorized a workable vocabulary in another language. Now I can handle memorization no problem.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I suffered a while from likely symptoms before knowing what it was ... it's called Attention-deficit disorder (ADD). Approximately 4% of people suffer from it. Add has nothing to do with physical agitation. Your attention is just lower than most people, therefore slowing the reading / learning and memory process....
http://joshuafoer.com/
Joshua knows as much about memory as anyone. Plus he's funny.
Practice helps with speed, too.
First, it takes me way too long to complete tasks (as if suffering from time dilation) — tests take me approximately twice the amount of time to finish [and the amount of time it takes to study and do homework is cumulative and unsustainable].
Sounds like you just need to schedule twice the amount of time to complete the tasks. Problem solved. :)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
To make such a statement is both cruel and more demonstrative of your own lacking than his. Anyone attempting to improve their lot in life by investing in themselves should lauded not ridiculed. Just because his path may be harder than someone else's doesn't mean he should give up, nor does it mean he cannot overcome present circumstance.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Believing "brightness" to be an intrinsic character trait is a psychological crutch for those who view their intelligence as their only redeeming quality. A large proportion of the variety of cognitive impairments can be overcome, many even cured, and people can and do get smarter. OP should be praised for embarking on a serious quest for self-improvement. If only those sitting on their laurels would do so as well.
Maybe the asker should figure out how to memorize the multiplication table before he embarks on a four+ year, $40k+ college expense. I'd like to ride a 200 hp motorcycle, but I'll master a 250cc before getting one.
There are lots of advice, but I'll contribute to it. I have been teaching for a few years and I was a good student before that. So I guess my advice are meaningful.
1/ SLEEP and HEALTH! Sleep is critical. Health is critical. Plenty of people apparently already pointed it out. But your body and your brain do need the sleep. Getting 2 more hours of sleep is typically more important than getting 2 more hours of study. Also, you will sleep better if your optic nerve is not too stimulated before you fall asleep. So try to stay aways from screens in the last hour of your day.
2/ Beware of slides. Many classes are slide based nowadays. I find it idiotic in most topics. Slides are typically short bullet points, they won't help you remembering everything. Also they contribute to student not writing during the class. Most people have a visual memory which means that you need to SEE the material. Also you learn better when you are active rather than passive. Most of the time you can accomplish both by writing your class.
3/ You need to study in the calm. No TV or radio in the background do not help you study, they are likely to be distracting you. Music can be helpful to cover background noise, I'd stay away from high BPM tracks or tracks with understandable lyrics. Classical, instrumental, electronic or pop music in a language you do not speak are typically good candidates.
4/ You need to study smart. Typically I find that going over notes, correcting them or re-writing them helps a lot to get the data in. I tend to spend at least 30 minutes per hour of lecture. Making picture illustration (schemas) helps. Before a test, I usually try to make a 2 or 3 pages summary of what is important. Once again, the point is not to have it, but to make it. Doing extra exercise help.
5/ Out of class material. The way the informations are presented in class is not the only way to present the informations. I found it extremely useful in the past to pick other sources of informations. Go to your library and pick a book related to what you study and read it when you have time. It might say the same thing as your class in a different way, or just say something different. But for sure that will help you getting different perspective of your subject.
6/ Exercises. There is no secret in how to deal with exercise. You need to do exercise. If you are too slow, you need to do more. It might be important to understand WHY you are slow. Do you not understand the techniques involved? Or does it take you too much time to apply them?
Finally remember that going to college is essentially a full time job. Even if you are enrolled for only 15 credits, it should probably take about 45 hours of your time each week.
Take a path in life more suited to your abilities. Tests taking twice as long, and tasks taking too long mean that you are not able to do them acceptably.
Taking the time to understand that the utterly pointless shit that is presented to you in college will have little or no impact on your life or career is the first step in understanding how to make oneself more "suited" to college.
This certainly doesn't mean quitting is necessarily the best or right answer.
And if your dream in life is to become a nurse or teacher, you don't really have an option of not having the degree, or being better off without it. I hate the fact that certain paths in life require a degree. Good luck arguing against that point with the other thousand applicants.
Besides caffeine? Anything else which may be a factor?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
everybody has different memorization skills (as in methods + ability).
some are innate, like better sensory memory (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste); some are more about how you think.
most can be improved with practice, or by using different kinds of memory working together.
for example, there's the often-mentioned trick of telling yourself a story which incorporates the material, an approach which lets people memorize details as dry as pi to thousands of digits or the contents of telephone books (or, more appropriate to this day & age, google search responses :).
try a variety of things and find out works best for you.
and practice with random things as you go through your day... could make a commute more interesting, anyway.
I recommend using anki: http://ankisrs.net/
The basic idea is you make electronic flashcards based on the material you need to memorize. Then the program quizzes you. If you get a question wrong, you will see that question again in a few minutes. If you get it right, the program doesn't show it to you for a few days.
People use systems like this to memorize vast amounts of information b/c human memory periodically runs garbage collection on unused data. If you recall the desired info at the right intervals, you get around that problem and can shove all sorts of facts into your long term memory. I use it for studying languages, but it can apply to anything. The Jeopardy super champion used anki to memorize trivia in preparation for the show, so I think it should work nicely for college classes.
Check your study habits. Group study is very effective. Apparently this is the "secret weapon" of Asian students, they tend to form more study groups. I use mnemonics quite a bit, e.g. OIL RIG == Oxidation Is Loss Reduction Is Gain.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I teach at a university ... If someone wants to do a university degree, there is no reason they should be unable to do so.
I'm a car salesman ... If someone wants to drive a car, there is no reason they should be unable to do so.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
The poster will never remember the answers.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...you have Aspergers Syndrome. Look into it & find out for yourself. I had the same thought patterns until I realized how retarded traditional education is for a man of my age for my particular industry (where a degree will hinder your pay/employability significantly)
I remember reading about a good set of books for improving memory, but can't remember what they were.
I think the GP's point was that if it's taking him twice as long to take tests, when he has to apply the information in a real-world setting (i.e. a job) he's probably also going to be slow. Perhaps unacceptably, depending on the job and the employer.
But that doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to get a degree and still apply it with the right job and employer. Good that he's trying to better himself at any rate.
If I consume gluten or wheat products in general, I develop foggy mind. No gluten, my mind becomes clear as a bell. What you are describing is a classic symptom of gluten sensitivity. A doctor can test you easily for this.
And what does that get him? A useless degree at best. You know damn well universities are about cashing tuition checks, not education, which is why such things exist.
Let's say he was taking programming courses, if he can't complete his assignments there without help - how the fuck is he going to hold down a job? Will your accomodated services come with him to his interview with Google? Your hippie bullshit "everyone deserves a degree" means nothing in the real world.
How are your special students doing post-graduation? You don't know or even give a fuck, do you?
Do you smoke? Stop. Are you unfit? Join a gym. Those two things for me made the difference between night and day.
"as if suffering from time dilation"
I started having trouble in my 30s with concentration, memory, and can relate to the feeling of being trapped in some kind of time dilation field. I didn't experience it all the time, more frequently when I was under stress. Until one day the feeling became so bad that I went to the doctor. It was poor diet, I had low blood sugar {stress made it worse}. I cleaned up my diet according to the doctors recommendation and don't experience it any more.
There are any number of things that can effect memory concentration consulting with a doctor that can run tests is probably a better place to start than /. Since you have suffered from sleep problems it may not be as simple as a poor diet but still a doctor is the right place to start.
I think we can all agree that it bears repeating- repetition is the key.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
That's bullshit. I started out with similar troubles, and just had to learn better time management. Skip the time-consuming questions, focus on the fast questions, then go back and work out as much of the time-consuming questions as possible in the time alloted.
Few students do this.
I think a lot of kids today aren't taught this for some reason. There are test taking strategies as far as time management. A few I remember: 1. Skim the test first, just to get a quick idea of what is on it. Allocate time based on point values (i.e. make sure you have time for essays if they're 60% of the exam!) 2. Answer all of the easy questions you know first as the OP noted. 3. Go back, on any multiple choice questions that were hard, eliminate the choices you know are incorrect. 4. Refer to #1, did any of the later questions actually answer a previous question? 5. By process of elimination answer any difficult multiple choice questions.
Memory and study technique are like all other efforts; they require regular training if you want to master them. There are no magic short cuts or pills that can remove the need of training. Some things like good sleep, exercise and not being stressed helps a lot, but you still need training.
The training will be hard and progress frustratingly slow in the beginning (think overweight ex-chain smoker taking up jogging or cycling; it is tough going in the beginning.).
Reading books is the key to success. You have to read regularly (like every day) and probably for more than an hour per day to make any difference (bed time reading excluded).
Memory is a complex thing, but for studying purposes I find it useful to distinguish between "passive" and "active" memory. "Active" memory is the stuff you can recall and talk about for some length. "Passive" memory is something where you can recall the meaning when you read about it again. Just reading a book usually just produce "passive" memory. Talking about the book (or movie, or show, etc.) afterwards converts the passive memory to active memory.
A good student is one that studies in such a way, that the most important stuff in the texts, are converted from passive to active memory.
There are several classic techniques to convert passive book knowledge into active; discuss the book afterwards with others, write you thoughts about the text down (making notes is useful even if you never look at them again), or use your inner voice to recapitulate what you have just read, or even talk aloud to a fictitious audience. The latter was a major technique for Roman orators because it improves rhetorical skills as well. It will improve your verbal exams considerably if you train the same way.
So try to start out with a small non-fiction book with a subject that you care for. Read a whole chapter, then reread it one page at a time, explaining to yourself with your inner voice using your own words, what was covered in that page and what parts were the important ones. Perhaps underline important passages.
Afterwards, try to recapitulate major points from what your read, perhaps glancing at the index as a memory aid.
Read another book on the subject in the same manner, and compare it underways (from memory only at first) to the first book.
The above will not just convert passive memory to active memory, but it will also help you to actually understand in detail what was written instead of just reading the passage on autopilot without comprehension, it will help you focus on what is important, and the comparison will spawn memory connection between both text, so that one passage from one book, opens up the knowledge from the second book.
The above is very slow and time consuming in the beginning, and it is hard work too. But don't worry, as time goes by, the speed will increase; you will develop your own way of committing the stuff to memory, and knowledge will make it easier to see what is important, and what is secondary.
The point is to learn how to learn in a slow, systematic and thorough way in the beginning, later you brain will do much of the stuff automatically, and the speed will increase too.
Read, recapitulate to understand what was read and to convert it from passive to active memory, try to identify what is key points, compare and connect the knowledge with similar subjects, read slow and thoroughly at first, and don't be afraid to reread stuff later.
Good luck.
This is why education is such a farce. I had trouble retaining information myself all through school. When I got into the business world (software engineer), learning was as snap. The reason was that I had every source necessary at hand to figure out how to do the job. No memorization was required. Everything could be referenced and looked up anytime. All I had to do was to see once what instructions were available to get the program going. I didn't have to have everything committed to memory. This came with continuous use. This is what education should be, giving the student the examples of how things are done and then allow them to use every source available to do it. NOT memorize everything also to prove how wonderfully smart they supposedly are.
I have seen some complete lowlife losers get into good job positions because they happened to have a good memorizing ability to get a degree. One such loser I worked with shortly told me how easy college was for him because he had the ability to memorize gobs and gob and gobs of information and then spew it out of his memory forever after the test.
If someone is sitting on their laurels, they've already improved themselves.
(name withheld by request)
I can sketch, but I do not have the fine motor skills or natural ability to replicate real world (or imagined) people, places, or things on paper. If I were to go to a university to study art, I too would take 2-3 times as long as anyone else, and produce work which was noticably less accurate/detailed than my peers. I could study harder, retake many classes, try all sorts of learning tricks, but it would always be an uphill battle.
It is easy for those of us in knowledge positions to think that success in technical classes is simply a function of hard work. That, while partially true, is not the sole criteria for success. A friend (and music notable) has said that nearly everyone can sing, and with practice anyone who can sing, can sing well. While that's true, it's only true in the sense that you could dedicate your entire life to singing and get good - good enough to enjoy it. But you would never have thevoice of Mariah Carey or Luciano Pavoratti or any of a number of naturally gifted people who also worked very hard.
I think the parent post is right -maybe college just ins't for this guy. At least not as a short term career choice. Speed and repetition, along with memory training may help. Or it may not. Choosing to become an artist out of desire, and finding that you cannot - with instruction - replicate basic actions is a prime indicator that art may not be the path which provides the greatest reward.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Every person is not a delicate butterfly who will grow up to be the unicorn if they just believe and clap their hands hard enough to make it so.
Sometimes, a wall in front of you is not a requirement that you climb it no matter the difficulty, but perhaps that walking around - or choosing a different direction - really is a better alternative.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Very few people have been killed by others getting their diplomas.
Such as Ritalin. Anything else wouldn't be worth the time you could have spent studying.
Seriously though, you're screwed education-wise. For the most part, if it isn't 100% about rote memorization, it's a vital part of passing exams.
The good news is that in the real world if you can't remember something off the top of your head and have to look it up, it's no big deal. The bad news is that the people who have good memory (and usually no other merits) will have a big advantage over you going into the job market.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Lots of weed. Wait, what was the question again?
As a conditional statement your OP could have done with an "IF". Were you trying to write Prolog?
I ran across some similar issues years back; since you're asking for speed, I have a few ideas to think about (besides fixing sleep, which WILL help lots - you might be able to get some advice from the college counselling department for that):
Meditate. Meditation has recently been tied to improvements in what is, essentially, 'cognitive speed' (I forget the publication, article came out summer 2013 though). UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the Oxford Mindfulness Centre have some excellent resources in this department, and (at least in my experience) 15 minutes a day can give one heck of a nice kick-start.
Questions Are Your Friend: If something about the material doesn't make sense to you, try and turn that into a question. Try and find different possible answers to the question. Ask your question to others; be willing to discuss what you've come across. If the material still doesn't make sense, that's cool - you have a new question! And if a lot of your questions seem similar to each other, categorize them. Come up with areas you know you are good at, and areas you have issues; work on problem areas. Seriously, though, question EVERYTHING. Getting in the habit of asking questions all the time means you'll catch problem areas quicker, too.
Mistakes Are Your Friend: Mistakes are a *GREAT* source of questions - they mean you tried to do x and did y instead, which means you get to come up with some ideas about how to fix it. Speed benefits very much related to the above.
Self-Improve Serially: Don't try everything at once. Pick one thing, whatever you feel is your current learning bottleneck, and spend some time making it better. In my experience, this means experimentation - try something, give it some time to work, and either stick with it or figure out what went wrong and build from there. Since you're in school, picking one major task to work on each semester (or quarter) is a good idea. This speeds up the overall process, because you're getting to the 20-hour mark (a major milestone, actually - there's a TED(x?) Talk about this somewhere) in whatever skill or habit you're working on much quicker, and you can turn those results into gains in other tasks.
Eat Right: Take this with a grain of salt; this is a complex area, there's lots of bad info out there, and I'm no nutritionist. That said, roughly, 'Simple' Carbs ('Regular' Pastas and Potatoes, White Rice and Breads, Sugars) and Trans Fats (typically any fats or oils which are solid at room temperature) should be minimized (your taste buds may take time to adjust). Eat a base of Complex Carbs (typically whole grain/wheat pastas and breads, brown rices, sweet+purple potatoes?), which are a major fuel source and scale nicely with exercise, along with Meats and Vegetables for fiber, protein, and most of your nutrients. Fruits, nuts, and berries make good snacks and typically provide a nice short-term energy boost, as well as providing extra nutrients. Stay well hydrated, too - urine should be more clear than yellow. Speed gains come from everything else working right, which can improve base speed as well as reduce any moodiness that might be making a task more difficult.
Prioritize: You come first. Let me repeat that: You come first. When several tasks collide, whatever they are, prioritize by the task which you believe will benefit you the most, preferably in the long-term. If some particular thing (such as a job) is constantly causing problems, either change it up or figure out a way to do it without it getting in your way. This will improve cognitive speed by letting you make decisions quicker, since you'll have some pre-developed value measurement.
Be Careful About Perfectionism: Bad Perfectionism means beating oneself up over errors; Good Perfectionism is spending as much time as is valuable to you to achieve the goal optimally and being ok with the result, whatever it is - your value is derived from the effort spent first. Speed from here is a result of avoiding the stress which comes from mistakes.
And every person on the planet could be the best basketball player on the planet, if only they trained harder/practiced more.
Some traits are influenced by genetics (intrinsic). The studies have shown correlations that indicate this is true with intelligence (though also influenced by environment as well).
The best advice at this point is probably to put off study for another 5 years, and in that time, find an intelligent hobby. If he wants better math skills, take up sudoko or cards. If he wants better language/reading skills, read more (fiction, non fiction doesn't really matter). Do things that exercise the parts of the brain they want to focus on.
I could *never* be a world-class basketball player, but I could be better than I am now.
Learn to love Alaska
I never liked the brute force memorization of songs, poems and passage I had to do in grade school but memorization is just as important as understanding concepts. Doing calculus for example, memorization of some basic integrals significantly speed up understanding and usage of more complex problems.
Nonsense. It's only one of my many redeeming qualities.
I really tire of the notion that people do not differ in intelligence. We know it about everything else, from sprinting speed, to artistic talent, to the strength of one's eyesight being inborn, but gods forbid we say that about brains.
Oh no, if we just spend enough money on schools, and feed little Johnny a federal breakfast, we'll find that everyone is smart enough to be an electrical engineer. Even all the little minority kids are geniuses but we lie and say they're not because racism. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I'm sick of it.
I'm smarter than some people and dumber than others, and no amount of mental gymnastics is going to change that.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Sure, see a psych who can make you dependent on some life threatening drug that hopefully will do what you hope for without all the many dangerous side effects.
If you have problem retaining information get more familiar with the subject, do lots of practical hands-on tests or walk throughs to demonstrate to yourself how it is working, all the way through. By properly covering each point and not skipping at any point it will all come together piece by piece.
Go back and review from the beginning every now and then to ensure you have not missed anything.
Pushing boundaries and becoming more than you presently are should always be the foremost goal of everyone. Does everyone succeed in every endeavor? Of course not. But even the struggle of the journey itself bares fruit. To simply give up and accept only that which is easy would be a tragic waste so much potential.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Depends on the test. I never skim tests. They could tell you the structure and breakdown of questions, but not the difficulty of them. If you are reading to that level, it's no longer a "skim" and you could just answer the question. So know the layout before you start. Most testgivers will tell you the number of each type of question long before the test, so you can prepare.
Rarely have I run out of time in a test. I'm usually first done. That doesn't correlate with score (I'm first done and usually do well, but I'll also be first done with a C or worse - if you don't know it, staring at it won't help).
Knowing what you don't know is the best thing for me. "I think it's 7, if it's not 7, then I don't know what it is or how to find an alternate answer" then pick 7, move on, and don't come back.
Elimination as an answering tool for multiple choice isn't a time management tool.
Learn to love Alaska
The OP comments that he/she is unable to commit times tables to memory. This alone indicates a real, measurable learning disability in at least one domain. He/she should get formally tested and have a plan to address the areas of weakness directly.
Talented people knows that Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work . Talented are good to hide hard work.
As others have commented, your condition seems a bit extreme and may be a result of lifestyle, environmental, or physiological factors. Get a thorough physical from a physician rather than relying on /.ers to prescribe a solution.
That said, you may want to experiment with various nootropics, esp racetams. A good bootstrap might be AGP choline and oxiracetam; both are fairly easy to acquire and fairly cheap. There are other experimentals available now (eg PRL-8-53) intended for memory boosting. For lack of focus issues, look into pramiracetam or nefiracetam (note the latter is a bit controversial due to an old study of megadosing dogs). Note that most noots will likely disrupt your sleep patterns after awhile, since they tend to keep the brain running in high gear. Also look into various choline supplements (my favorite is centro aka Lucidril, but be careful about cheap choline bitartrate, which can have adverse emotional effects. Another recommendation: omega 3's (fish/flaxseed oil).
fwiw, I'm 50+ and starting getting fuzzy around the edges about 8 years ago (tho not to the extremes you indicate). After exploring various noots, I've worked out my own stack, which I start/stop as needed, and the effects are definitely positive for me. But as always YMMV. Longecity can be a good source of info (tho with its share of crackpots as well).
Today I read something that made me doubt my decision to go back to university as a math freshman two years ago (I'm in my mid 40s). It's a quote by the inventor of the Pinyin romanization system for Chinese, Professor Zhou Youguang, who turned 108 today, as recorded by Victor Mair:
He tells me that one of his secrets of longevity is to sleep whenever he feels like it and get up and work whenever he feels like doing so. [ languagelog ]
I deeply believe that to be true. And all the more I hate this irrational university system that makes people get up before dawn. In every lecture there's someone dozing off, and this has nothing to do with the lecture being boring or people's partying habits. It's the enormous workload and the stupid time schedules that make people sleep-deprived, and that cannot be good neither for our health nor for our cognitive capacity. Believe me, this affects the kiddies as much as us oldsters. Or even more.
If I were to follow this hunch I'd go back to taking moocs. But that would feel like quitting. Also I don't trust my self-discipline enough, I think I need some external pressure.
All the evidence points to intelligence being an innate trait, but it also sometimes co-exists with certain learning disabilities.
It doesn't go both ways however -- someone with Down's syndrome has a lower intelligence and won't be able to complete a college regimen (unless it's dumbed down for political reasons, or they're a poli sci major). Generally you're supposed to have a 115 IQ or higher to get through college.
Futurist Traditionalism
What the OP should do is go see the Accommodated Services department (or equivalent) at his/her university and see what accommodations can be made.
And what happens when a future employer is unwilling to make accomodations for someone who cannot perform?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you can't sleep, learn to meditate. This will rest your mind, among several other things.
I started meditating in college with the Silva method (alpha level meditation -- very light meditation, akin to when you watch tv)
After college, I started with the theta level (the point right before sleep) meditation course from: www.probablefutures.com.
A year after I got my tech diploma from college, I decided to transfer to university to finish my degree. I continued meditating during that time.
When I got to university, the amount of time it took me to finish an exam dropped by 50-75%.
When I was in high school and college, I typically took the entire time available to write an exam, and didn't always finish.
In university, I finished 17 out of 21 exams first. The next person out took twice as long as I did. The other 4 exams, I finished within 5 minutes of the first person.
The one difference in my lifestyle was meditation.
That is to say, it was found that people who believe math to be a talent perform worst than people who believe it is a skill that can be mastered with effort.
Suppose math IS a talent. Then those without that talent would have tried and failed to get good at math. They would correctly believe that math is a talent.
Those who have the talent would have tried and succeeded, and since people tend to believe that their experience is common experience, they would assume that people who are bad at math didn't try. So they would incorrectly believe that math is a skill instead of a talent.
Your data is consistent with either conclusion.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Whenever I take a test the first thing I do is look for the questions that I absolutely know the answer to and tackle them first. This accomplishes two things: it builds confidence for tackling the tougher questions and it ensures that you won't run out of time by missing out on easy questions. As others have mentioned, the key thing is to understand the material rather than trying to memorize it. When your brain understands something conceptually it will create little hooks to retrieve the trivia bits that are often asked on tests.
Although my school days are long behind me I find that these techniques still work for me when I'm learning new concepts today. Take a bubble sort for example. In my view, it's more important to understand how and why it works rather than the syntax to accomplish it. Syntax you can look up. Understanding the concept is the key thing.
Hey, that's how I do my alpha testing!
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Often when a person leaves the educational environment for an extended time, he or she loses the study/memorization/testing skills that once were routine and instinctive. Those skills can be difficult to re-learn. Check to see if your university has a Returning Students or a Students Over Traditional age Program. When my dad returned to school, they were able to help him with study and learning strategies. What they couldn't help with, he got through on sheer cussedness (for instance, it would take him many nights of study and several tries to pass each of his higher maths class, but he made it through them all).
Keep slogging through, and best wishes!
No joke. The best way to increase the rate at which you retain information is to train yourself to retain information without regard for its utility. Commit lyrics to memory. Memorize the hobbit appendices. Takes time of course, but it isn't something that you have to sustain for your entire life.
Get a book about "how to learn efficient" and one about "practicing".
There are easy learning techniques involving index cards.
Practicing is for getting up to speed.
I assume, you do try to 'learn' after class and try to 'practice' before the exames?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
> Your data is consistent with either conclusion.
Did you see data detailed somewhere? because I wasn't even trying to present the data supporting those conclusions, I was only summarizing the conclusions and the general form of the data that was used to come to them.
I am sure such a discussion of the original relevant studies and their data might be interesting but, it would require actual data and not just my brief summary.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
2 men and a woman are talking about past travels they enjoyed, and one of the men is having trouble remembering a name. He says to the other man, "What's the name of that flower... the red one with the thorns that smells so nice?" The other man replies, "A rose?" "Yes, that's it," replies the first. Then he turns to his wife and says, "Rose, where was that city in Spain where the Moors ruled for 764 years and 5 months?"
For most people, I'd guess it's repetition, probably. But I've seen brilliant students whose memorizing skills are so well developed that they never write anything twice, though they will read through things multiple times. I'm convinced that is a learned or self taught skill and has a lot to do with attitude and a lack of fear of the material.
It's how I code! :)
Logic is a talent?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A computer fresh out of the box with no OS installed is pretty much useless. It's got "talent" to be something interesting. You have to install on OS on it, which is analagous to teaching. You have to keep the OS patched, which is "life long learning".
There are some sad cases of kids raised with very little input, and they don't function. There are also some inspiring cases of kids with mental challenges that received special input and achieved.
Most of us fall somewhere in between all of that; but it's "nature vs. nurture" is a false dichotomy. You need both.
arghhh... bullshit.
I used to, and still do, hear the same thing regarding artistic talents. My senior year in high school, I was spending 2 study halls, 1 art class, and my lunch, and any other classes that let us take a blow off day, in the art room, and I was spending hours at home on it as well. Yes, I could draw/paint/etc better than most others, but they spent somewhere between zero and 20 minutes a day, in an unconcentrated state, practicing.
I do 100% believe that there are predispositions to various activities, and if you enjoy something or, at least, easily stay focused on something, then it'll be easier to get better at said thing. I don't think those are talents.
I'll also admit that I think there *are* some naturally "talented" people, but the term "savant" fits better.
The vast majority of tasks, especially the 9-5 job ones, do not require any talent. Dedication, hard work, commitment, etc... sure, but you don't need to be especially talented, and most people are not. I also think anyone can learn just about anything (master is another question) if they really want to. It could be an uphill battle for some, and I think that's what the original topic is about... what are some ways he can make this easier? That's a valid question for anyone, and for each person, the answer will probably be a little different.
All that said, just as the "naturally talented" folks are the exception and not the norm, there will be some that simply won't be able to excel in some areas. If you have an IQ of 85, don't get your hopes up on joining the ranks of string theory experts. If you're over 400lb before college, you probably won't be joining the olympic-level marathons... but you could work up to a nice long jog.
You need to visit mnemotechnics.org - Best collection of techniques that I have found on the web. http://mnemotechnics.org/wiki/Main_Page
According to some recent studies there's something in the blood of younger people that makes their brains learn better. Enough so that giving an older person blood from a younger person actually has very noticeable affects on the brain.
So one possibility would be to get regular transfusions from a young person to keep your brain functioning at its best. Younger folks tend to be destitute so you might be able to pay for this. Otherwise I suppose you could use the techniques demonstrated in the documentary series Twilight to get yourself "volunteer" donors...
You can't fix stupid.
Bullshit! I have a lousy memory but seem to be able to put things together OK .
I struggled in HS and in some undergraduate courses (barely made a D in Introduction to Biology which was a pure memorize-names BS course.) Nonetheless, I went on to get an engineering PhD from a tier 1 university. Hell, even now I can't recite all of the multiplication table without stopping to figure it out. My GRE was in the top 2%, so a good memory isn't even necessary for the GRE.
On a possibly related note, I've had the same wife for 30+ years and she assures me that a bad memory is an advantage in a relationship...
Einstein didn't consider himself to be a natural talent at maths. Penrose or someone taught him differential geometry, which is about as math as maths can get.
If any story deserves a dup in a couple of days time, it's this one.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Learning and memorization aren't the same thing. But they're very closely related. If I want to know how long something will take to reach the ground when I drop it I can pull out my watch, but measurement error will dominate. I can try more complicated experiments and derive gravity, but that's going to take a long time and a lot of effort. Or I can remember gravity, remember acceleration due to gravity and figure it out easily, assuming minimal air resistance. And as soon as I remember air resistance I can tell if that's a reasonable assumption, which I won't get from dropping cannon balls off of a castle wall.
If we're talking computer science it's even easier. Your toolset includes a bunch of data structures and algorithms. You need to remember those, and you need to remember their characteristics. For education you need to understand the characteristics of quicksort and answer questions about it, such as why can you pivot around a particular value in a particular position, why is it faster than insertion sort, why would it sometimes be not faster. If you don't remember the algorithm it's hard to reason about it.
The same applies to problem solving in general. So much of problem solving is pattern recognition. Problems usually fit some template. They are similar to something you've seen before and you can apply the same approaches to solving them. The more patterns you have available the quicker and easier this is. Newton was already standing on the shoulders of giants. To be educated today you must draw from the knowledge of the past, put in your toolkit and use it and build on it. The way we draw from that knowledge is through our memory.
I can sketch, but I do not have the fine motor skills or natural ability to replicate real world (or imagined) people, places, or things on paper. If I were to go to a university to study art, I too would take 2-3 times as long as anyone else, and produce work which was noticably less accurate/detailed than my peers. I could study harder, retake many classes, try all sorts of learning tricks, but it would always be an uphill battle.
Do you have any idea how many hours those others have already invested in those skills? You'd be playing catch up, but not because of talent! (note: I went to college for fine arts... there's a LOT of people that struggled to replicated real world imagery, even if they could make nice looking art)
Here's one of my favorite (real) stories (it's slightly on topic):
A friend, Tom, was selling some ceramic pieces at the art fair.
A lady wanted one of the pieces, and was a little shocked at the price - $85.
She asked how long it took him to make it, that it was priced so high (which, btw, was only high in the "student art sale" realm).
His reply: "22 years - my entire life."
He then briefly explained that it would be impossible for him to make that piece if it weren't for everything that came before it... the hundreds of others that never made it off the wheel; the learning of the fundamentals of color, line, and form; etc etc. So no, it's not worth $85, but I need the money for school, so I'm selling it at a loss.
It is easy for those of us in knowledge positions to think that success in technical classes is simply a function of hard work. That, while partially true, is not the sole criteria for success. A friend (and music notable) has said that nearly everyone can sing, and with practice anyone who can sing, can sing well. While that's true, it's only true in the sense that you could dedicate your entire life to singing and get good - good enough to enjoy it. But you would never have thevoice of Mariah Carey or Luciano Pavoratti or any of a number of naturally gifted people who also worked very hard.
Those are exceptions, not the norm, even for professional singers. Do you have any idea how many people are paid to sing? Dedicate your life to it, and there's a REALLY REALLY good chance you can be one of them.
Choosing to become an artist out of desire, and finding that you cannot - with instruction - replicate basic actions is a prime indicator that art may not be the path which provides the greatest reward.
If you enjoy it and have the desire, you already have the reward if you are actively doing it. ...and have you seen any artwork... ever!?! The "replicate basic actions" are the easy part, and often not required. (ex. https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1392&bih=1047&q=Willem+de+Kooning&oq=Willem+de+Kooning&gs_l=img.12..0l10.11723.11723.0.12785.1.1.0.0.0.0.87.87.1.1.0....0...1ac..32.img..0.1.86.yf1nF7wnQGY)
So, because he could never be at the top of his field, he shouldn't even bother?
In my classes, we were taught the "one mark is one minute of time. Skim your exam and work out which questions to answer first for the most marks, and then work out which of those you can answer. Do those first. Stuck for more than 30 seconds? Skip to the next question, and come back - the answer will probably occur to you in the meantime."
I can relate.
The problem may be that you're approaching your studies the wrong way. Memorization is lame; it's what you do when you don't care enough to put the mental energy into understanding the thing. Learn how the elements of what you're learning relate within the discipline and you'll find that the information sticks with you.
When I find that I can't will myself to be interested in a topic, I try instead to focus on what is important about it. I had to learn accounting that way.
On a totally different note, figure out what environments work best for your studies. Some people need it to be completely quiet. I prefer a level of chaos that is unrelated to what I'm doing, but buzzing nonetheless -- coffee shops are perfect.
Finally, *stop failing classes*. Don't blow your GPA, it will be with you until the last time you ever decide you want more education. Put school on the back burner for a year or three, then go try to make it in the "real world." All the while, pay attention to what would have happened had you had the degree, vs. not having it. I failed a few classes and left. When I came back, I knew why I was there and my GPA stayed above 3.5. I'm now a semester from finishing grad school.
You can do it but you have to want it.
Says the person that works at McDonald's.
In one word, caffeine
I've studied Psychology. All books were American, and because of that my English has improved enormously, but that's beside the point. Most of these psychology books were set up with learning in mind. One of the described this clearly, with the PQRST method.
1) P=Preview: browse through the chapter that you're going to read
2) Q=Question: what is this chapter about? Ask questions to yourself, writing them down is even better
3) R=Read the chapter
4) S=Summary: make a written summary of what you've read
5) T=Test: do you understand what it's about, do you remember?
For the summary, give it some more attention; don't make it so short and concise that you cannot decipher it anymore in a week or a month. If you reread it in a month and you don't know what it's about anymore without using the book, the summary is no good anymore. It should bring that a-ha feeling, just enough to get those things back into your mind. The test part can help here as well.
Forget all the advice about the memory. It is all about the method.
If you write down the steps you do your work and compare that with other people, it's easy to figure out how to improve. But you can also do your own optimization. Once you realize the importance of a good method, the way to do things, you don't need much memory.
The Chinese classical book, Dao De Jing (literally the book of the Way), says "if you learn every day your knowledge/memory increases; but if you understand the law (Dao means the natural ways/laws of the universe), your knowledge decreases (but you can do more).
Every sentence in this book is this profound if you can understand. It also contains concrete advice on how to understand Dao. It is a philosophical book not a religious one (although many read it like a Bible). For those who suffer intellectually, this book is a savior.
I suffered a brain injury at the age of five due to head trauma. I've had several issues over the years including memory and other cognitive problems.
Over the years, I've developed various coping strategies (lists, mnemonic tricks, remapping tasks to take advantage of strengths and minimize weaknesses).
The most useful thing I've learned is that most people have to make up for deficits, and you are not at all unusual.
The advice on exercise and healthy eating make sense in general, but you will also need to create some unfair advantages for yourself. Rather than depending on your own, natural memory, spend some focused time on mnemonic gimmicks. They aren't the same as learning, but they will allow you to carry lists around in your head like the world's most ingenious cheat sheet.
I've had good results with an old copy of You Can Remember By Dr. Bruno Furst. There may be better courses I don't know about, but this one gave me a bag of tricks I use every day to function almost as if I had a normal to exceptional memory.
It's just a bag of tricks though, and only a doctor specializing in cognitive issues related to sleep disorders is likely to be able to help you with the root cause.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
My wife went back to school in her 40's and got her Bachelor's degree, Master's degree, and began her PhD. The key was that she went to the (fully regionally accredited) Anthioch University campus in Santa Barbara, which (at the time, anyway) was geared 100% toward "adult learners" with at least 1-2 years of college credit already. (Note: It is an expensive private school, but if you want it bad enough and can get loans and/or scholarships, it's doable.) Their approach is different from that taken with freshly-minted high school graduates, acknowledging that most adults who return to school have a complex life built up during their years away from formal education, and are at a different place in their life than someone fresh out of high school. There are several things they do differently: class size is very limited; the "quarters" (or whatever) are only 10 weeks long and very intensive; you can opt for letter grades or pass/fail and you are evaluated entirely on class participation and the many MANY papers you must write for each class, usually including a final paper that demonstrates mastery of the material. Classes are scheduled in such a way to better accomodate the student's outside committments, such as family and work. Some students take all their classes on weekends, while others stack them all on one or two days a week, or evenings. Some students find that going back to school surrounded by others who are doing the same thing is more supportive of their efforts.
Bottom line to what I'm saying: Check out other ways of going to school. Distance learning can be a good option because there are several ways to make that work. Schools catering specifically to adults that are returning to school after an absence are another option.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
I don't imagine the poster has as bad of a long-term memory as he/she believes. It is more likely that they are not engaging the material and forming thoughts about it, and are instead attempting to memorize facts without making connections between them. This is extremely common, and the thinking process for appropriate learning is not taught.
We know it about everything else, from sprinting speed, to artistic talent, to the strength of one's eyesight being inborn, but gods forbid we say that about brains.
For all those things (except maybe eyesight, but even that can be vastly improved with medical treatment), the variability based on effort is much more than the variability based on 'natural ability.'
Getting a marathon time from 3 hours to 2 hours might take some natural ability (whatever that is), but getting it from 15 hours to 4 hours is all effort (and knowing how to apply that effort).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No. That he can never be at the top of his field is proof that the GP (skids) was wrong. You are just agreeing with me in a most disagreeable manner.
Learn to love Alaska
Chuck Jones' illustration instructor told his class that "all of you have a hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better..." , While a hundred thousand is a metaphorically high number, if you worked hard and seriously enough, you would eventually develop the fine motor skills and the "ability to replicate real world (or imagined) people, places, or things on paper." In addition, you would in the process, develop a distinct graphic style, and be at an employable level of ability--probably better than most art school students, a good portion of whom are not willing to put real effort into improving their skills.
Similarly, with steady voice work, you can be employable in ensemble, chorus, or supporting work, which, while not at the level of a "named" star, still would allow you to sing for more than enjoyment.
Dogged determination focused on self-improvement may not get you to to the heights of ability, but it will generally get you to a practical level of competence.
Oh no, if we just spend enough money on schools, and feed little Johnny a federal breakfast, we'll find that everyone is smart enough to be an electrical engineer. Even all the little minority kids are geniuses but we lie and say they're not because racism. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I'm sick of it.
Assuming that you're not just a racist troll (it's not clear from the posting) I think you're missing the point.
While I agree that there is an innateness to intelligence, failing to educate capable kids is bad for society. The geniuses (Einstein, Turing, etc.) may make it, but a potentially great brain surgeon may be working as a middle-manager at a department store because there was no path to medical school.
You don't get points for finishing early, but you do get points for getting the correct answer. The elimination strategy (and going back to questions that you weren't sure about) is meant to improve your chances of getting the right answer.
Using up the allotted time in order to maximize your score is, in fact, a time management tool.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Not with that attitude.
study.
Very few people have been killed by others getting their diplomas.
Thousands of DOD-contractor engineers over the past 60 years would disagree with you. Highly-credentialed scientists have been responsible for millions of deaths in the modern world.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
what does the processing of foods have to do with anything? Should we also stay away from genetically modified foods? They're less natural, therefore less green, therefore more evil, therefore the antithesis of everything good and pure such as school.
These ideas seem to be along the lines of finding something someone does not understand, claiming to understand it without evidence, claiming the solution is
insert_personal_ideology.
(sorry, the end of the previous post was interpreted as markup)
Yeah? Tell that to a guy born with no legs.
Which is, incidentally, my point.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
I've had a lifetime sleep disorder which I've spent the last three decades dissecting. If you have a real disorder, you're getting a lot of well-intentioned yet useless advice about general well being.
So many times in my life I've heard "we all go without sleep, you just learn to deal with it". These are people who can't tell the difference between a nose bleed and haemophilia, because they've never been there.
There are many illnesses which are thought to impact sleep quality. Among these are depression and fibromyalgia. It's not unlikely that depression causes poor sleep, and poor sleep leads to poor memory. Poor sleep alone by another cause is a good depression mimic. A psychologist will understand your symptomatology, but your underlying condition—if it is not actually depression—might not respond to the usual drugs.
On the bright side, some drugs which are considered to be antidepressants actually provide benefits because they directly treat sleep disruption.
Low doses of amitriptyline are commonly used to treat FM. I experienced improved sleep quality, and a boost in initiative and motivation. I also had a fuzzy head for the first half of my day, every day. This wasn't a winning trade off for writing code. This drug (in my body, and by some accounts in the literature) has some kind of weird, antagonistic relationship with caffeine. By the time I consumed enough caffeine to clear the fuzzy brain, I lost all the sleep benefits.
Most people way overdose with caffeine. Once you start chasing the tolerance effect (tolerance begins in as little as a week or two in novice coffee drinkers) you end up drinking about three times as much as you need to get a small increase in net buzz. All that extra caffeine in your body is not friendly to your adrenal system, and it's known to mildly disturb your sleep architecture. The nose-bleeders can ignore this term, if they wish. We sleep haemophiliacs can't afford to play marbles in a rose bush.
I get 80% of the benefit from caffeine drinking two cups a day, with 7-8 g of ground coffee and 120 g of water per cup. I drink one immediately on waking, and the second cup six hours later (four to seven hours is an acceptable range). This is half what I was drinking the first time I thought I'd achieved moderation. Don't ask me about my pre-moderation coffee consumption. I've learned that it takes my body about three weeks to accept a coffee reduction of 30% as being perfectly normal. The key is to use a gram scale, because for the first ten days your brain is working overtime on how to cheat the system. Never drink a coffee you don't make yourself while cutting back: you'll feel glorious and your brain won't let you forget it.
Half of an amitriptyline dose metabolises into an equally cheap drug, nortriptyline. Weirdly, both sides of the AT metabolism are active. When I discovered this, I thought "why don't I just try the NT half by itself". This was a good call: almost as much sleep benefit, way less fuzzy brain.
I get a condition I call "clutch slip" where the cognitive side of my mind is well aware of all things I need to be doing, but I completely lack some mysterious edge to dive into these tasks and do them. The nose-bleed assholes are going to fuck this up again. Yes, I can actually force myself to grin and bear it and do the work. No, applying the lash does not get me past this clutch-slip psychological barrier to the promised land of actually becoming absorbed in the work. If only. I'd pray for that to happen, even at the risk of being socially rejected by all my heroes in the afterlife we all vehemently reject. Worse, the caliber of my work is shit warmed over. In other words, what passes in this life as mediocrity.
Have you ever had the experience where you're in some life or death struggle with a complex regex or an XSLT script to sanitize an input file and suddenly you realize, "you know, I could run this through tools A, B, C, and
This should be modded up. A lot of the OP's stuff seems pretty garden-variety college overload, but THIS. If he's in his mid-30s, and can't do simple multiplication, there is something dysfunctional in his cognitive processes. And yes: if he's suffering learning disabilities like this, maybe college isn't the right move. A trade school, sure. But I would steer him away from any four-year degree. I wonder what his major is...
But you would never have the voice of Mariah Carey or Luciano Pavarotti or any of a number of naturally gifted people who also worked very hard.
True, but luckily, in many cases you don't actually need to be a world master. You just need to figure out if you can reach a level where people will pay for what you can do, in one way or another.
My piano teacher once told me that really talented students sometimes had a tendency to not make it, because at some point a natural gift just doesn't suffice compared to less-gifted people who had to work hard from the beginning.
I have a talent for mathematics, recognised in my first five years of schooling. Top 10% of the country (or higher). I have a degree in an applied mathematics field, and I have been recognised as extremely intelligent.
I am, however, unable to accomplish anything in mathematics or any other field.
How does that fit in with your incomplete logic?
Yeah? Tell that to a guy born with no legs. Which is, incidentally, my point.
It's an unrelated point. People who are handicapped aren't under discussion here. We're talking about normal, non-damaged people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, it's repepetitition.
If you don't know the answer, knowing you don't know it is a time management strategy. Wasting time on a question you don't know, and can't deduce the answer to is poor time management. When you've answered every question to the best of your ability, there's no reason to continue to second-guess yourself (and in fact, it's been shown that your first impression is often more right than a second look).
Learn to love Alaska
Exactly what I was going to say.
I am a bit like the op I can back to school after a five year break and I chose math of all disciplines. It was hard at first and then I discovered Pranayama. You should try it it really helps the mind and memory retention. I do Nadi shodhana and kumbhaka. It's honestly worked wonders for my memory. Also trataka helps a great deal. I don't have any studies to back it up though but my own testimony. It's free and relatively harmless. Taking Commutative Algebra and stochastic next year at cal so it's either my brain or the practice hehe.
I've heard a lot of students talk about Adderall helping them to study. If all you have to do is memorise stuff, then why not? Also learning some simple memorisation techniques will help. Check out books by magicians and mentalists, they're the real pros at that kind of thing; there have been some recent studies by neuroscientists (Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez Conde at Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI) in Phoenix, Arizona) and apparently they genuinely work.
On the other hand, if all the course has to offer is a front-loaded information dump as an excuse for a curriculum (Do they make you sit through hour-long PPT presentations?), you may want to consider studying elsewhere if that's possible. It may be that your brain is rejecting it because it's too damn boring.
Young Man,
There are 3 things you need to do to become an exceptional college student and I will not charge you a dime for this extremely valuable information. Let us begin:
1. Begin a disciplined exercise regimen that consists of sustained aerobic activity every day. Cross-training is fine and even preferred. Run, bike, swim, walk, climb, engage in a bit of hanky-panky, etc. Read the book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain" by John Ratey for inspiration. Sleep is a natural side-effect of vigorous exercise. Exercise is good for the brain.
2. Learn MindMapping (The Buzan way) and begin to take notes in this fashion. Mindmaps use a basic ordering idea and radiate out from the center. It is an efficient and very effective way to capture important points. More importantly, it helps to instantly cull away non-essentials. MindMap the textbook. Mindmap the lecture.
3. Cure your addictions. Whether it be nicotine, Alcohol or even processed sugar. Read Allen Carr's "EasyWay" to quit smoking/drinking/overeating. A 25 year old is resistant to the self inflicted poisons of youth (Beer, Cigs, etc) At 35, your body is spending a lot of it's precious energy dealing with toxicity and withdrawal. There is no morality play here. Simple Science. Alcohol, for instance, is a highly toxic poison. let that go. You will be much happier.
This will make you stronger, smarter, sexier and wealthier and will probably make you live longer.
Godspeed!
-badford
It is certainly a handicap for some.
PROVIGIL (modafinil)....
Right off hand I forget the name of the practice, but you make up sentences or stories using the "stuff" you need to know.
From Clear Brook I ate - F, Cl, Br, I, At : 7th group of the periodic table
My all time favorite; Some People don't F#@k - S, P, D, F : orbital paths of an electron
I've remembered those since 10th grade.
Later on in life I needed to know the steps taken in case of an emergency (Emergency Response Guides (ERG's)). Creating a sentence with the key steps was a life saver.
Some stick with you others just for that test, in a real emergency the actions are known, so automatic (as were the emergency systems) but when taking a test you needed to know them step by step. Many used this memory guide.
I had a girl friend who was studying psychology, her approach was to answer the questions the way the instructor wanted them answered. That may seem obvious to many, but I'd answer them the way the instructor, books, and talks all combined to explained it; she answered exactly the way the instructor said it in class. She passed as valedictorian, so she was on to something.
I had problems similar to what you are describing. What I didn't realize at the time was that I wasn't sleeping properly. I would stop breathing and it would wake me up enough to prevent getting to REM sleep but I had no idea it was happening. I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. Ask your doctor about getting a sleep study done. It saved my life.
First, try to tune out the negative, inflammatory comments. No good can come of dwelling on them. Second, I would suggest seeing a psychiatrist, especially given your statement about a prior sleep disorder. Nothing against general practitioners, but psychiatrists are more familiar with medications that might help. The psychiatrist should also be able to refer you to a professional (psychologist, social worker, licensed counselor) to work on the non-medical aspects of your situation.
Regardless of where you decide to get help, explain to the person what you wrote in your original post. Bring notes about what you want to discuss at your appointment. The fact that you are having trouble completing the assignments and remembering the material, as well as having trouble on the tests is important to bring up. In contrast to your situation, some people do great on the assignments and can explain the material to other people very well, but they do not do well on the tests. (Yes, I know that most people say that they do not do well on tests, but I'm talking about situations where someone gets among the highest grades on the homework but scores in the middle or lower on tests.)
Try these advices and I hope they will help you.
Cognitive Limit
TED Talk by Joshua Foer
"A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed - I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself." - Georges Clemenceau
Albert once said "Never memorize what you can read out of a book!" The real genius of the statement is not immediately obvious perhaps. What you reference often in your daily work, will find its way into your long term memory by means of that frequent use - no need to try to 'force memorization'.
Absolutely true, but the OP isn't a 12 year old who isn't quite getting his scales. He's in his 30s. That's not to say he can't pick up the memory and learning skills to compete in a university environment and ultimately in the job market, but he's clearly way behind his 18 and 19 year old competitors in these skills if he's not just doing poorly but outright failing classes.
It's worth a long, hard look at your goals if there are several years of catch-up and then several more of study to get where you're going. Is graduating with a BS at 45 after 12-15 years of study worth the results? Only he can decide, but better to do so now before those years are gone.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This depends greatly on whether you can skim tests. It works great on paper exams. Some computer-based exams don't allow you to do this.
But it's still a useful skill to learn because it's applicable to time management in general. Do the easy things first (if you can--priorities matter in the real world) as it gets them off the list and can provide a sense of accomplishment, and then work on the more difficult items.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
There are good reasons for using the time you have left to go back over questions you couldn't answer when you first looked.
For a start, one *can* remember things by spending time trying to remember them...there are even techniques to 'jog your memory', like going through the alphabet when trying to remember a name.
Also, your memory might be jogged by a question have answered since - or just plain answered out right. I've had tests in which an early question is answered in a later question. That was a Chinese language test, but I'm sure similar things apply to all tests, to one degree or another.
Even just considering the number of times I've spotted mistakes I've made under the pressure of the beginning of the exam, when that pressure is removed by having finished.
Leaving early is silly, imo. I suppose everyone is different... ...but, yes, if you've answered every question to the best of your ability, then there is obviously no point in going back...point is, how do you know?
Max.
Provigil if your insurance will cover it. Works wonders.
http://positscience.com/brain-resources
In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell summarizes a series of research which seems to prove that while having enough intelligence for a particular task is a must to succeed in that task, having additional IQ makes next to no difference. This is true for at all levels of complexity of tasks (from winning a Nobel to keeping a daily job) inspected. Being a bright and otherwise nondescript person I am, I would love to see some research contradicting the claim. I suspect there is none.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
The advice given by others (such as making sure you don't have an undiagnosed learning disorder) is useful. Here are some tricks I used in medical school:
Creating songs about a subject: "The radius is connected to the ulna. The ulna is connected to the humerus..."
Pretend to teach it to others.
Repetition, and repeat, again, and then once more. I usually need to read something 5-6 times to have everything fully committed to memory.
After class, immediately re-work the notes. Timeliness is key to clarifying information that you just learned.
Also, you mentioned taking multiple classes at once. Could you drop down to 1-2 this semester to see how it works with a reduced work load? Your post is well-written and clearly explained; so you clearly know more than you're letting on.
I've taken more tests than most. I may not be "normal" but I know what I know, so when I know I don't know any more, there's not much point in continuing, though that mostly applies to multiple choice tests.
Learn to love Alaska
Well, that's fair enough, I suppose. You're very different to me, that's for sure.
Max.
Ask Slashdot: How Can I Improve My Memory For Study?
Have you donated your brain to science after you die, and this is the equivalent of putting on clean underpants in case you get run over?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
www.supermemo.com
Hey
Generally, the brain is unable to function at max capacity when stressed. I by that I not only mean from having to keep up with a thousand things in a day, but also dealing with things at an emotional level. If you have too many things to do in your daily and/or emotional life, this may be what is impacting your ability to memorize and concentrate.
My advice would be to cut down on extra-curricular activities if possible, as having too many things on your head will only stress you out more. Zazen meditation for about 30 mins a day might also help you un-stress, and in turn improve your cognitive abilities.
Another tip for studying: Make sure there is nothing around to distract you while you study. Turn off the TV/Internet and try to focus on your studies.
Also instead of reading your material through, focus on your own understanding of it. I cannot stress this enough. It's not about reading and memorizing - it's about thoroughly understanding the subject. Do your studies as if you had to give a presentation on the subject you are reading. If you have the opportunity, explain the subject matter to someone - fx a spouse, friend or study-partner, and allow them to ask questions. This will expose any holes in your knowledge and can give you an idea on where to focus your studies next.
Cheers
New knowledge needs time to connect to everything you already know, but once it is acquired you have a better understanding than someone younger with a fresher mind who memorizes with ease. At least I like to believe that. There has to be an upside. And I just found this:
As adults age, their performance on many psychometric tests changes systematically, a finding that is widely taken to reveal that cognitive information-processing capacities decline across adulthood. Contrary to this, we suggest that older adults’ changing performance reflects memory search demands, which escalate as experience grows. A series of simulations show how the performance patterns observed across adulthood emerge naturally in learning models as they acquire knowledge. The simulations correctly identify greater variation in the cognitive performance of older adults, and successfully predict that older adults will show greater sensitivity to fine-grained differences in the properties of test stimuli than younger adults. Our results indicate that older adults’ performance on cognitive tests reflects the predictable consequences of learning on information-processing, and not cognitive decline. We consider the implications of this for our scientific and cultural understanding of aging. -- Ramscar &al: The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lifelong Learning (PDF) , via languagelog
Next time it takes you double the time to learn something, consider yourself blessed!
Most Universities have a Counseling Center that can help you diagnose any study or learning disabilities that might be getting in the way. They can also help you with study skills and test anxiety issues. I went through the same issues and learned some techniques that work for me to get past the test anxiety (mostly anyway). Check into that.
Look for a book, The Art of Memory, Francis Yates. This is about ancient Roman and earlier methods and techniques to improve memory. Before there were electronic recording, before there were stenographers, there were people who could do what we would consider amazing memory feats. It's been a while since I read the book, but I think memory artists were used in courts of law to 'say back' the testimony word for word when need. That is one example. Today, those are other techniques are still around. Someone who is good at it can do 'amazing feats,' but still useful.
If it is politics, he is on the right place.
I would LOVE to be able to write exams on a computer. Never occurred to me to even ask for that as an option. I always just kind of assumed they'd tell me to shove it.
It won't really help... ...but you won't care! /ducks
Just an observation ...
That's why education fails. We spend so much time on "how to educate 'children'" we forget that there is no "children". Every child is unique, and applying one standard to all will "punish" any who don't think like the others. Though we try to fix that with segregation, but that only goes so far (gifted programs for the "top" 15% and special ed for the bottom 15%).
Learn to love Alaska
That's what 80% of the student body was on when I was in college.
Well I see all sort of responses, but am missing a very important factor: motivation. If you, deep down, somehow feel uninterested, demotivated or disappointed about the study you are doing, you won't remember what you need to remember. Because deep down you want to call it quits.
Adderall.
People who can't handle multiplication are damaged, but within the range of normal.
For them ROI of college will be limited. Best to keep debt under control if the only thing ones degree qualifies one for is fast food.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Debt that cannot be discharged under bankruptcy will effectively suck years out of your life. Make sure you've got something besides 'memories you can't recall' for the money.
That a kid doesn't belong in school now, doesn't mean they will never belong in school. If they've got debt from a first go round hanging on them it will be much harder.
Put another way: There is nothing that will focus a kid on school like a couple of years of ditch digging.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Multiple choice is different.
Even if you don't know the answer, if you can eliminate one or more answers you will be able to guess with the statistical expectation that it will improve your score.
Multiple guess test scores are typically (#of correct answers - (# of incorrect answers / (possible choices - 1))). e.g. if you can eliminate 2 choices of 5 from 15 questions you don't know the answer to and guess you will gain about 2-3 correct answers vs leaving them blank.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've been reading 'Amateur Doctor' magazine for decades. If that doesn't make me a physician, I don't know what will.
I blame the AMA. They're the ones suppressing all sorts of good cures. Chinese mustard and Clorox bleach baths for radiation sickness for example.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
For them ROI of college will be limited.
Unless they learn to multiply. Then the ROI of college will be multiplied.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
A sleep apnea can disrupt deeper stages of sleep and leave you very stupid.
Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine was a big help for me. Then I lost weight and didn't need it any more.
Are you smart enough to explain what 'smart' means - coherently?
Requiem for the American Dream
Your situation is very specific and needs specific answers. But while I have some ears and eyes, the number one thing i've found for students to improve their studying is.... TO ACTUALLY STUDY. Sorry, but 20% increase in actually looking at the bloody coursework would solve 80% of the issue for your run-of-the-mill learner. Too-common conversation "So, Mr. B - what do we need to study?" "The stuff that I've been telling, showing, posting and discussing with you." "Oh. Where is that stuff?" "On the course site." "Oh. I don't really look at that." Not all, but a significant portion of students who are otherwise pretty savvy thinkers and are willing to discuss any number of pressing (i.e. popular) topics seem to foreswear actual effort on the stuff they must know will determine their grade > success > salary > fame. etc. I know the first response will be "maybe it's you" but this seems to be an issue across courses, instructors, etc. I'm beginning to think that in some situations, technology is perhaps making it worse. In the case of school tablets, we're handing "digital natives" a device they understand is for texting, socializing, gaming, flirting, sharing, etc. and saying "now go study with it!" - and the response for a non-trivial number of users is predictably poor.
Take a look here: Spaced Repetition.
In short, you have to measure the speed of the forgetting and repeat things at the moment that you almost forget them.
Yes ... but that doesn't necessarily mean that the course that he's chosen is likely to be the most effective one for his (hmmm, did TFQ specify a gender? Meh.) personal circumstances and abilities.
Not untrue ; but there is a corollary that other people can and do get less smart. There is no way that I can see to distinguish one case from the other from the information in TFQ. Hopefully it isn't the case, but from the information presented, there's no real way of knowing one way or the other. (There's also the trivial case of no (detectable) change, for completeness.)
The OP really needs to get some professional advice from a specialist in the "psychology of learning", and/ or "careers". It is peculiar that he's going back to full time education in his thirties, which implies that he's made a significant amount of money at something during his young adult years. So why does he so strongly feel the need for college education? There's unwritten, but probably relevant background there.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I used Mnemosyne to successfully memorise thousands of foreign words. You type in all the facts you need to memorise as individual "cards" which are in a question-and-answer format. You can also download "card packs" from their website for some popular topics. You then memorise cards by reading the question, guessing the answer and then awarding yourself a score out of 5. Mnemosyne uses fancy spaced repitition algorithms to detect how well you've memorised a card, and to calculate the optimal time to show you the same card again. You need to do sessions every day though otherwise it's not so effective. Over time the number of cards you do each day gets smaller and smaller.