If you have read the earlier story titled “A CASE OF GOING MEMORY
BLANK IN EXAMINATION”, it was a true life story.
It was a bad experience to say the least. What this means is that even very brilliant
students sometimes face this situation in the examination hall. They also
experience examination anxiety. If this is true, we may then ask the question,
what is the probable cause of this experience?
First, it
appears that it is not just enough for us to sit down and read. We must prepare
ourselves both psychologically, emotionally as we do academically.
We must be
able to learn how to handle examination phobia and anxiety by being able to
connect what we have read with all possible types of questions that can be
generated for us from the topic.
We must be
able to apply the acquired knowledge to solve problems as they arise.
We must
examine the various points from which questions could be set up for us in any
subject or course of study.
For
instance, we should be able to figure out how a question could possibly be
twisted to deceive us while testing our acquired knowledge on the topic.
Failure to
do all these leaves us with the option of going memory blank in examination
first before returning to the starting point as it happened to Joe.
Each time
you read any topic, relate it to past questions and expand it beyond the premise
of the questions you are using. Create all possible scenarios of possible
twisting by examiners and try to work out the solution.
Secondly,
our memory can be likened to a basket filled with different layers of
information. The information at the bottom of the basket cannot easily be accessed
unless you clear the ones on top of it. Our memory behaves alike.
You cannot
easily recollect a topic you studied or read last after a long time past. The
information is still stored in your memory but deep down, so deep that it may
take you sometime to recollect.
If such information is critically needed to
answer a question in an examination hall, you will not remember it immediately
and this may lead you to ignore the question because you have probably had the
problem of going memory blank concerning the question in the examination.
If
however you later recollect the information perhaps because in the cause of
answering the ones you understood, you had cleared the information stored on
top level of your memory, then you would have been able to reach this topic,
buried deep down in your memory which you had not read for a long time.
The key
here is knowing how to keep information fresh in your memory everyday.