How I fixed my memorization, and how it changed my life.
Firstly, none of this is AI. I just thought I'd rant about what has helped me with my memory, since I see a lot of people talking about it on this sub.
I've always had an issue with memory, inside and out of school. I found it difficult to retain any information for longer than the first day I'd learn it. It became so natural to just forget everything I learned, that I started ignoring that it was an issue, and just let my life be negatively affected by it, in any situation. Only recently I've noticed how powerful of a tool memory can be; memory literally allows us to recall anything, on the spot, and apply it to whatever situation requires it. Its fascinating really. Myself and many others I've talked to seem to really undervalue the importance of a strong memory, not just for school, but beyond, and even into our health. I struggled with memory issues for a while, and I just wanted to share some things I researched in case there is anyone else with similar issues that could find some use out of this.
A couple months back, I finally started to realize how bad my memory was cooking me in school. I'd study for what seemed to be enough time, but it amounted to nothing come the test. I was naive to think that, as long as I sat there for hours, reading notes and doing practice questions, I'd magically do good on the test. After my midterms in the second semester, I was disappointed to say the least, and all that time felt like a complete waste, which in turn, demotivated me for the rest of my semester. Then finals were coming up. Something had to change. A couple of my classes discussed the concept of spaced repetition in learning, but I decided to finally look into it more, and see if this could maybe have been my solution (spoiler: it was).
Simply stated, spaced repetition is the process of recalling your memory on a specific topic over increase intervals of time. Simple, but that alone doesn't mean much. Let's say you learned an important topic on Monday. You would first break down that topic into simpler understandable terms for yourself, then do something active with that material, such as speaking it out loud, re-writing it, or turning it into something like flashcards. Then you want to space out the time until you look back to this topic and recall it again. So let's say you wait a day, it's Tuesday now, and you review whatever active material you did with that topic. Briefly jog your memory from this, and do it again, be active with it, then take a break. Now you space it out, skipping Wednesday, and recalling the information just before you forget it on Thursday. Then simply do it again, recall, review, and do something active with the material. Then just continue this process, each time, extending the length between recall and doing more and more active work with it. Now, this only works if you actually care, and start memorizing on the day that you learned it. Cramming will never out preform this process.
There's more to it than just spaced repetition however. The most important thing, which I kinda already covered, is active learning. It's one thing to review at these intervals consistently, but by adding something super simple that engages you with the content each time will help significantly more. Another important thing you can add to it is something called spontaneous recovery. The problem with spontaneous recovery, is that its, well, spontaneous. The gist of it, is that at some random point from the day you learned a topic, you either randomly recall it, or randomly get forced to recall that topic during a period that you wouldn't usually be thinking of it. So, back to the example, in a smaller scale, if something caused you to remember that concept on Wednesday, before you actually wanted to recall it on Thursday. This random recovery is huge for indicating to your brain that this concept isn't something it should be forgetting about, because it's actually applying to your daily life. Once again, this is hard to incorporate without the help of a tool. When I was trying to utilize these techniques cohesively, I just made my own tool to help, and I used it through the second half of my semester, if you're interested I'd be happy to explain it to whoever might find it useful.
After researching how all these concepts work together, I finally tried utilizing it when I was the most demotivated after my midterms. The motivation was still hard to find which is when I was introduced to social accountability, but this post is already getting too long to explain that here. Essentially majority of the new topics I learned, I just organized and allowed myself to actively learn them with very low volume spacing them apart. It becomes very easy once you are 3 or 4 cycles into retaining a piece of information and it's not exhausting at all because I just stress about it less, knowing I get more benefit from spacing it out, rather than cramming it the week before tests, or day after day. By the time my finals came around I felt more confident than ever before, because the topics I learned post-midterm seemed almost second nature, and kind of a joke how simple they really were. In the grand scheme of it, spacing out the information and keeping the amount of work low leading into finals made it much easier to comprehend the topics, retain them better, and actually understand what they mean.
Of course this isn't going to be a magic solution to anything, but for me it seriously changed the way I look at school, and now, after about 2 months, I've noticed significant boosts in my day to day memory. The way I think about important topics in my daily life seems to be easier to retain, and it almost feels like I've just organized a bundle of thoughts that's been stuck for years. I know this is kind of a rant, but there may be some people out there that find this useful. There is plenty of articles and great research on all these topics you can find out there if you want to look deeper. I believe that organizing my memory like this has seriously changed my outlook towards school and now everything feels much more reachable and doable for upcoming tests with this in mind.
TL:DR:
Stop cramming and just start seriously valuing your memory because it's a very powerful tool. No amount of hard work will outperform the power that your brain has when it comes to memory. Incorporate active learning over increasing intervals of time FROM THE DAY YOU LEARN IT, and you'll start noticing how simple and easy to retain topics actually are.