Hey, have any of you ever tried to log the process by which you remember things?
I ask because of several reasons, one of which is what I often talk about, the fact that I sit in lecture and I don’t write notes and no one else in my discussion groups admits to this being even remotely possible for them. And cue me being really confused.
And two, because there’s been an increase in talk about “mind palaces” since the Sherlock episode came out, and I’ve been interested in the talk. I remember reading articles as a kid about people in memory competitions who remember extremely long sets of unrelated numbers, and some of them explained the process as a very visual one. They would build a route and along the route they would set down sets of numbers with established visual indicators that told them what the numbers were. So a purple house with the a car in front would be associated with several numbers. And then they’d move on to build the next thing on the route. And as they walk along it, they’d remember the sequence by seeing the things they placed on the route. In Sherlock, he instead goes to his mind palace, which is just a more complicated version of a route. Apparently, people do this too. There’s an interesting little summary of someone who uses a mind palace out there, but the explanations always confuse me. Because I think of all of the effort it takes to embed these explanations into visual cues that have alternative meanings, and I can’t understand what how it would be worth it.
But I mean, what I do is visual too, but I create a visual image or sequence of the concept I want to play through, and then if I study, I refine the details of the image in my head, so that I can visualize it* in closer detail. So if someone asks me why the structures in the male fetus are the ones that get masculinized by Estrogen, I just replay the image of Estrogen from the mother being immobilized and the Testosterone working its way through the blood into the brain where aromatase turns it into Estrogen once it enters the brain cells. And so when I need to answer a concept, I pull the image forward and play it/work it through, rather than memorizing clear facts. But I don’t place these facts anywhere. I just try to understand the process and then once I finally do it becomes a fact to me, so I can pull the image up. If time passes and I stop pulling the image up, the details wear away, but the general structure of the concept is still there, so I can sharpen it later very quickly.
Also compatriots, I just saw this post from our mind-palace friend. And I don’t mean to judge, but it made me shout “NOOO” in my mind as soon as I started reading it, because if you have to remember C6H12O6 with images like “C is obvious, as it makes most people think of the sea. So you could have a picture of the sea, or hear the sound of the sea in your room, or six shells which all sound like the sea when you take them to your ear.” I may be wrong, but the way my brain sees it, you’re missing the step of understanding exactly what it is you are remembering if you go in a roundabout way such as this one. And then I had a crey.
But anyway, pals, darlings, dolls. Could you be a dear and, if you can explain it, tell me how you think, understand and/or remember things? You know, as a reply to this post, or an ask to me, or a reblog, or whatever. It’s just a pique of curiosity but there’s so much potential for different and very interesting discussion?
Please? Pleaseeee? There’s no wrong answer and you would be making me so very, very happy.
*Dear high school compatriots, it has come to my attention that while two years with Timmreck may not have created the foundation for the way I learn things, it certainly helped solidify it as a viable option that is now the only one available for me. THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
