Tips to Improving Your Memory in College
Let’s face it, some parts of our education process require plain and simple memorization. As much as you may understand the concepts behind the theories, you still have to memorize who came up with the theory in the first place. Psychology students, especially, are bombarded with tons of famous names, theories and dates. Memorizing all that information is vital to passing exams and moving on to higher level classes.
The first tip to memorizing something is to write it down. Just as children are taught to write their spelling words over and over again, you too can utilize this technique. Write the name of the psychologist down on a piece of paper and copy from your textbook or notes what his major contributions were. Then, copy it over and over again until you’ve filled the page. By the time you get to the end of the back side of the paper, you should have it memorized. Yes, it’s time consuming, but so is reading the same passage over and over again. With active reading, as in writing what you’re reading, you’re going to find that you get much better results.
Another tip that goes back to our early learning methods is flash cards. Remember how we all learned our multiplication tables? The same holds true, even in advanced learning. As mentioned above, just the simple act of writing the information down onto index cards helps. Then, you need to quiz yourself. Look at the card and say the answer out loud. If you got it right, it goes into one pile, if not completely right, it goes back in the stack. Keep this going until all the cards are in the completed stack. But, you’re not finished just yet. Have a friend quiz you on it so you’re not tempted to flip the card over, read the information and say to yourself, “oh, I knew that.” Use a friend to keep yourself honest.
Visualization is the key to your next tip. Thoroughly read your notes. Close your eyes and picture what you’ve read and how it was written. Perhaps you wrote it in a red ink pen, see the ink on the page. Remember the particular notes you took on the page and what you found interesting about that page. Think about the pictures that were featured, the captions under the pictures. All of these things will help you to remember the details that are being sought on the test.
Tags: college