I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but finals week is right around the corner. I took a super cool class this semester about cognitive psychology, and throughout the weeks we covered topics like memorization, so I thought, “Why not spread the wealth of information?” I’ve started implementing these methods while studying, and it has changed the game for me.
1. Create a Phrase/Word for Multiple Terms
Let’s get the complicated term out of the way-first letter mnemonics. This is when you take the first letter out of each term you are subjected to memorize, and create one word to memorize which will stand for those various terms. One that you may already know is HOMES, which stands for all of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. This is one of my favorite ways to memorize terms. This helps you to store the terms and to recall them in an easier manner, but it will also help those terms stick around in your mind. I mostly use this for term or vocabulary memorization, and it also really helps with foreign languages too!
2. Find Commonalities Between Topics
I implement this practice by thinking of connections between certain items, such as remembering to get avocados at the grocery store, and being able to remember to also get coffee creamer because I use both of those for my breakfast. This is called creating a memory network through an associative link, the link being the breakfast “genre” of food. This trick has saved me a lot during exams, especially in my psychology classes where we need to memorize the functions of certain parts of the brain and such. This is a great strategy to use when trying to remember people as well. I feel like we have all been in an awkward situation where someone comes up to you and you have no clue who they are. You can link meeting that certain person with the place you were at or an item you were wearing, with a letter in their name. It might seem complicated but it’s really a quick and efficient process.
3. Replicate an Action in All Phases of Learning
Maybe this is the psychology nerd in me, but I find this one so cool. We all have a process in our memory storage called a context dependent memory, where we are able to retrieve memories easier and quicker when we are in the same context as when they were first presented to us. Yes, lot’s of academic talk there- let me break it down for you. I chew the same kind of gum in class, while I’m studying, and while I’m taking an exam (a tip I learned on TikTok before I took this class). The action of chewing the gum during the exam will unlock something in the brain to retrieve information easier than without the gum. The same goes for being in the same classroom or using the same pen for all three stages, learning the information, studying it, and working on the exam.