My Terrible Memory...

There has always been one personal characteristic or aspect within myself that I wish I possessed and that is a good memory. For years in school and even other areas I have had difficulties with remembering important information and material. This has been such a struggle for me and I repeatedly feel like there is nothing I can do about it. I have found that without a good memory there are so many things I am missing out on. I am so jealous of those select people who have a photographic memory or who can look at something once and remember all the key things they read or briefly saw. I can stare at pages of notes or even one sentence and still forget what I was staring at about ten minutes later. Even though I do have a terrible memory and I would say it affects my schoolwork I have found various ways around it and because of the memory techniques I was taught in CLS 105 when it comes down to it I can recall information better.

It happens to be very convenient for me that we are learning about memory now in CLS 105. This is great timing because recently I have been in situations where I have to memorize information and fast. I had a Spanish presentation a couple days ago where I had to remember facts about Mexico, I have a Psychology 205 exam coming up on Tuesday, and I also have a Psychology quiz and a Spanish 201 exam on Thursday. In order to get me by for this next upcoming week I chose to find the best memory strategies that work for me in my Psychology 205 class and my Spanish 201 class. The two strategies I chose were the use of acronyms and the Link System.

First off, Spanish is without a doubt a bunch of memorizing. Whether the memorizing come within conjugating verbs, remembering cultural facts, or memorizing vocabulary words, I needed a quick way to remember all of this information. Since I have a vocabulary quiz in Spanish every Thursday I choose to focus on the words and think of ways to link the words the best I can with anything I can think of. Since I am a kinesthetic learner as well as a visual learner I at first write down all the words I need to know for that quiz. I take a piece of paper and split it in half, writing the Spanish words in the left hand column and the English translation directly next to it on the left hand column. After writing down the words and seeing if I just already learned the words or not I figure out which words gave me the most trou

ble. For example, I had a tough time remembering the word “daughter-in-law” in Spanish, which happens to be “la nuera.” To remember this word I used the link system and though of something that would help me recall “la nuera.” I came up with the idea that since daughter in laws are new to a family and the word “nuera” starts with an n and somewhat sounds like the English word “new” it clicked for me. This may be a silly way to remember words but this strategy especially works in Spanish

for me. Another example using the linking method was for the word “criar” which means, “to raise children.” Since the word “criar” sounds like cry, it made sense that children cry “criar” is extremely similar in that respect.

For Psyh 205 I to look at a different angle on learning the information rather than just linking it right away. Because I am learning chapters that have a ton of different theories and stages, more so with developmental psychology, using the mnemonic device of acronyms increased my memory tremendously. An example of using an acronym to help remember the information was when I was trying to remember the three

stages of the prenatal period. The three stages were the Germinal stage, Embryonic stage, and the Fetal stage. There was no way I could just remember these stages and in order for what they actually were and meant so I created a little ac

ronym and takin

g the letters “G-E-T” and putting it in a phrase of “Girls Eat Food.” I thought this acronym was something I could remember because it makes sense in my life and it’s often times to silly that it sticks with me. The second acronym I created for Psych 205 was fir the four stages of childhood. These stages contained the letters “S-P-C-F.” I came up with the acronym that “Sally Picks Connor First.” This made sense for me because Sally is actually a woman I know very well and

her first child’s name happens to be Connor. It was natural for me to just think that Sally picks connor first and this in a way used the linking system as well because I tied it in with something familiar to my life and since Connor is her child it went along with the four stages of childhood for Psych 205!

I feel that with the linking system and the mnemonic system of creating acronyms memory is easier to come by. Especially in times when I need to learn the information fast and there will be a mass amount of information on my Spanish test and Psych exam I know I can turn to these techniques. The information that I needed to memorize mainly came from the book but then it comes directly from my notes in both Psychology and Spanish. I hope these strategies allow me to receive satisfactory grades next week!