“You do not really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother.” ~Albert Einstein
Interestingly enough, both of his grandmothers died before Einstein was ten, so I wonder whom he called when he wanted to detail the inner workings of the atom bomb? If he had called my Mema, she would have tried to deafen him with a whistle she kept for prank callers and then slammed the phone down. But I digress…
Am I recommending that you call Granny and lecture her on the Krebs Cycle? Absolutely not. You will be taken out of her will. Instead, imagine yourself as the teacher about to present the material you’re studying to your class. How would you prepare? Let me give you a hint from the other side of the desk: You read it, you roll it around in your head, and then you practice delivery.
In my personal experience, nothing forces me to learn something more clearly and in depth than when I teach it because the last thing I want to do is stand up in front of you guys and look like a moron. When I read through the material, simply recognizing key facts and knowing a gamut of vocabulary words isn’t going to cut it. I need to be comfortable in my knowledge if I am to explain complex mechanisms, give colorful examples, and delve into the hows and whys and whens that are associated with biological processes. The better I am able to break it down for my students’ understanding, the more my students can learn and comprehend. Higher level of thinking for collegiate sciences requires one to go way beyond memorizing facts and regurgitating data—that’s high school stuff. Now you’ve got to understand this information and apply it to the natural world. It’s like comparing chimpanzees with humans. Chimpanzees have photographic memories that are much more impressive than humans’; they can memorize numbers and patterns in a split second. However, you don’t see chimpanzees using this know-how to launch rocket ships. Comprehension is not only beneficial for success in your current classes, but in the ones down the road as well. Impressive skyscrapers are not constructed in quick sand. Everything in math and science will be based on this early material.
If I had a vacation day for every time I’ve heard a student say, ”I thought I understood it, but then I got the test and I went blank!” I might not have to go to work again until my retirement party. Gary North pointed out a cold, hard truth in his series of study skills for high school students: “Most students can’t psychologically face the reality of their own ignorance until they are forced to during an exam. This is the wrong time to discover that you don’t know the material.” So how can you find out beforehand? Lecture to the wall.
1) Find a quiet, isolated place.
2) Read a section or page out of your text book and then close it.
3) Summarize in your own words what you have just read and say it out loud. In other words, lecture to your wall. Teach it in your closet. Explain it to your grandmother. Whatever.
4) If you got it, move on to the next section. If you couldn’t remember anything, go back and try again. If you thought that section was confusing, then you should spend more time on that section’s material, and less on the stuff that already clicked.
Even though it’s an easy enough concept to follow; it’s pretty challenging, psychologically speaking. It feels pretty awkward when you first start, honestly. So why am I telling you to participate in such craziness? Because reading, summarizing information in your own words, vocalizing these ideas, and listening to yourself speak will activate many different parts of your brain. The more you can utilize these different areas during the learning process, the easier it is to recall the information when you need it. In addition, it’s been well documented in many studies on learning that the more senses you use while studying, the more likely you are to retain the information. This is why it helps some people to rewrite their notes so that they can “touch and move” with the words. It is also why others like to eat peppermint or chew certain flavors of gum while they study and when they take the test. This creates a link between the taste and smell of the candy and the information amassed while studying. Your mind is working full steam ahead by filtering the fluff, grabbing the good stuff, and twisting it all around in a way that you can understand it best—it’s tailor-made for you! If you practice all of this while you’re studying and I hooked you up to a PET scan device (PET is a medical imaging technique that measures brain activity and projects images in color)—your cerebrum would look more like a Christmas tree than a wrinkly pinkish mass. Your memory hooks will resemble something that could pull in Moby Dick instead of a little Nemo. Not to mention the time you’ll save from staring at a textbook and merely looking at the words while thinking about lasagna or something.
Try it. I dare you…one subject per day. You will become an academic BEAST. The more time you give it, the better it will work (in other words, don’t expect great results in only 10 minutes before your test). It’s going to rock your world, I guarantee.
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