Every student fears the imminent string of midterms of fall semester. You just moved in! You aren’t ready! The intro classes are ridiculously hard! Cramming is a course of action some students believe works for them. Perhaps memorizing a lot of information in a small timeframe is a good thing- perhaps scientists are wrong about what they’ve found to be true. Perhaps preparing at the last possible minute is what works for you. However, if this is not the case, here are three of the best ways you can improve your memory, increase your likelihood of passing, and study stronger.
1. Study over a longer period of time. Memorizing over time is shown to improve recall. This phenomena is known as the spacing effect, or as a space study. To quote a passage from www.gwern.net:
“Across experiments, spacing was more effective than massing for 90% of the participants, yet after the first study session, 72% of the participants believed that massing had been more effective than spacing….When they do consider spacing, they often exhibit the illusion that massed study is more effective than spaced study, even when the reverse is true (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1994; Kornell & Bjork, 2008a; Simon & Bjork, 2001; Zechmeister & Shaughnessy, 1980).”
2. Use mnemonic devices, also known as tactics to remember things easily. Some mnemonic devices could be songs which help you remember grammar rules of a foreign language, acronyms. Another great tactic which is closely related would be chunking, which involves taking a set of data and breaking it up into small bits to remember in groups. For example, when trying to encode a set of digits, which is easier to remember? 199420015609, or 1994, 2001, and 5609? Most would say the second option, which illustrates the method of chunking. The human mind can generally remember up to 7 items at once, so chunking is basically a loop-hole for this very general rule.
3. Get your beauty rest! In all seriousness, REM is worth much more than you may think. According to an online article by the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School last reviewed on December of 2007,
“Research suggests that sleep helps learning and memory in two distinct ways. First, a sleep-deprived person cannot focus attention optimally and therefore cannot learn efficiently. Second, sleep itself has a role in the consolidation of memory, which is essential for learning new information.”
If you’re struggling with readying yourself for tests, and if you feel more often like passing out- give these three strategies a try, and seriously guys, get the sleep you need, not the sleep that is so very convenient for your schedule. Your brain can only take so much abuse. Pro-tip: nap in between study sessions. Have at it!