Memorize, Memorize, and Memorize!

Now that the spring break is over, we all are back to the routines of reading, writing, and, most importantly, memorizing. Memorizing is really important when we study for the exams, especially when the tests are focused mostly on facts and definitions.

When it comes to memorizing, I have been practicing it ever since I was in middle school so I did not have much trouble memorizing certain definitions. In fact, I think I tend to memorize pretty quickly because I've been memorizing things the way that worked for me for a long time.

The best way for me, personally, is the flash cards. This is because I am a visual and kinesthetic learner. Although this strategy is not mentioned in the "Memory lecture" for CLS class, I use this the most effectively and I want to share this as part of this week's blog. The good thing about flash card is that not only I visually memorize by going over them multiple times, but I also memorize by writing the definitions on the flash cards before I start looking through them. The class I mostly use this strategy is the Art History 106. The flash cards work the best for this class for I have to memorize a lot of paintings at once; because I have to memorize paintings, I need to look at them over and over to memorize them.

As mentioned before from the previous blog, the flash cards are well provided by the professor. With these provided flash cards, I put more informations that I think are important to know on the right side.

After I have all the imformation written down, I cut out each sections and fold by half to have painting on one side and the information on the other. After this I just carry them around with me and look at them over and over wherever I go.

This not only saves time in studying for the upcoming lecture, but also makes me be prepared way before I sit down and actually start studying for the test. Although many of us know how the flash card strategy works and I am sure many of us use this for their study aid. But because I use this strategy the most when I memorize, I had to share the effectiveness I get from this.

Antoher great strategy that I actually learned from the CLS class is the Acronym sentence, or acrostic. This strategy makes us to create a sentence from the first letters of each item that I want to remember. Whether it is for science or history course, if we need to memorize the terms or words in order, we can arrange those words in order and create a sentence or phrase with the first letters of each.

For my Astronomy 104 class, I was able to use this strategy very effectively. The materials we learn in astronomy class these days is the H-R diagram, or the Hertzsprung - Russell Diagram, which plots the luminosity as a function of temperature for stars. It's usefullness comes from how it illustrates stellar evolution of many different types of stars in one glance. This is where I used the acronym sentence to memorize the information of the diagram.

The bottom of the diagram is the temperature going from hot on the left to cold on the right. At this scale, there is 7 sections divided by colors according to the temperature and each color has the letters to indicate its identification. We needed to know these letters in order from O to M in order to remeber the color and the temperature corresponding with it.

Here is what I did to memorize this. The letters are arranged in the order of O, B, A, F, G, K, and M, where O is the hottest and M the coolest. Realizing that making a phrasewith these letters would help me better in memorizing them, I created a phrase Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me. This helped me memorize the letters and order of them much better; by repeating the phrase over and over again, the letters and order was eventually stuck in my head that I could not ever forget anymore.

When studying for the exams, you will need to do a lot of memorizing. And it is imporatant how you memorize the materials that could help you remember them quicker and longer. To me, flash cards and acronym sentences were the perfect way!