Yasemin

Towards the end of the semester, my workload increases significantly. Exams, assignments, and summatives for multiple subjects require a lot of dense reading and comprehension of subjects with complex explanations. Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed and don’t do as well as I like. It’s not that I’m bad at the topic; it’s just delivered in a way that overloads my memory. I recently listened to a podcast discussing the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), and I recommend you take some time to listen,...

As part of my schoolwork, I watched a series on revolutions that changed history. We compared and contrasted the French, Russian, and American revolutions, with a quiz at the end of the lesson. I found it easier to retain information when I saw that all these revolutions shared similar causes, allowing me to see a pattern or structure behind them, instead of just memorizing hard facts. Our brain is wired to notice patterns. That’s why we can finish incomplete sentences or make assumptions....

This past week I’ve been rewatching old podcasts and TEDs. I came across Dr. Katy O’Brien’s old talk about Metacognition , and one thing really stood out to me. She asked us to imagine being asked to go to the grocery store and get a certain number of things, then she asked the audience to put up their hand if they would write it down as a list. As the number of items increased, so did the hands being put up; I caved on her third list. She revealed to us that our instinct to write the list...