Whenever someone ask me what course am I taking and I say in return, BS Biology, they tend to wonder then how do we students of the said degree do all the memorization portions of the course. Well, it has not been an offbeat for me to meet this kind of awe since the field of science has always been regarded as somewhat mere systematic search for knowledge when in fact it is more than that. It is actually a thorough analysis of what we, in general, find of great significance for the existence of all concerned.
Since we were born, at least from the point our brain became capable of storing all of our inputs, we have developed an active system which processes, consciously or not, most of the information we regard significant or that those which our senses perceive. I myself practice some techniques especially when dealing with the terminologies in my field. For an instance, doing the scientific inquiry in our endeavours has lots of things to consider. There lies the need to truly “commit to our memories” the concepts and the principles that are for keeps. Of course, as for all areas, not all the tidings we encounter will be remembered. If we resolve to choose among those, there arises the need then to develop a method or a system of storing that information. A case in point, I make use of mnemonics or keys as my memory aids to facilitate long-term storage of information. For example, the macronutrients in biological systems are always encountered in any physiology or biochemistry courses and in order for me to remember such, I have developed this cue, Mag Pa CaFe K Muna CHONS (In bold letters are the actual symbols for the elements; Mg, P, Ca, Fe, Mn, C,H,O,N, and S.). Another one, for long, since grade 4, I had this key working very well for me- AQueLORQuiMGaMMAREA. It stands for the correct order of the Philippine Presidents from way back to the most recent. There are just lots of things that are indeed made significant by our capabilities to store most of the events in our lives, all of which we may sometimes regard with great importance or are just held on in our memory unknowingly without any concerns. Those things are sometimes automatically encoded and stored in our minds. Unnoticeably, it seems like we truly care for some things that we tend to remember them though we really don’t intend to. For an instance, I didn’t aim to remember my cousin’s birth date but it just happened that whenever I’m asked about it, I can really tell the exact date. Probably, alongside this way of storing information, broad and even fine points are associated with some sort of feelings or emotions that facilitated the storage of such detail. If we are caught in a situation that includes strong emotions, we tend to remember to some extent very clearly, events linked to such mood or atmosphere.
Some mechanisms can truly help us recall the things we want to recall but there would really be times that unintentionally, we forget even the necessary things we are not supposed to forget. I, myself, experience this somewhat an encoding failure. Attending to my major subjects in Microbiology, there are really lots of new information I and my co-majors didn’t encounter during our first two years in the course. With new perspectives and field being introduced to us, some details are really not encoded and stored the moment we hear them through lectures. What I do to comply with this problem is the usual way we students are suppose to do, to study it by ourselves after the class. In that way, I can easily understand and recall our lessons. Anyway, I believe, the best way to remember things very well is to first exert efforts in understanding the information, analyzing it for eventually, it will stick in your mind.
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