I came
across the phrase “going memory blank” in my high school from a chemistry
textbook I had used. The author had graciously added a page where he took time
to guide the student on how to study the subject. However, the technique could,
as I later discovered, also apply to any other subject. Like they often said,
you can’t stop kicking gold around as a game until you discover what it is. I
became conscious of this phenomenon and did everything to avoid it at high
school. It is a fact that you never get to notice the existence of a problem
until you become conscious of its presence.
It’s just like
you get to notice a particular brand of car everywhere on the road when you
begin to admire it as your choice automobile, perhaps you are getting ready to
buy a new car. That’s the problem with the going memory blank phenomenon.
You’ll never think it could happen to you until you experience it. The result
is usually bad because once it happens, you must think fast and smart to
wriggle out of it. Otherwise failure will literally be staring at you in the
face before the test is over.
All the
while in my teaching career, I got my students to recognize the existence of the
going memory blank phenomenon and play safe in examinations. It’s like a hidden
banana peel littered on the floor that could surprisingly bring very brilliant
students down unexpectedly in a test.
My best
friend and classmate remained subdued after the examinations in one of his
courses at postgraduate school because it happened to him during the test. He
went blank after reading the questions. He did not know where to start from,
with eight questions on the paper and you’ll make a choice of the best five
questions to attempt. He studied and taught Chemistry while the paper he was
writing the examination for was on a course in administration. You could
understand that were the paper to be in his field, it would not easily happen.
That is not to say that the paper was that difficult, rather he was overwhelmed
because he over-prepared for the test.
So he remained subdued after the examination,
and could not talk much about the paper like we usually do when we were
confident of a good score at school. He lost hope of making a good grade and
took it for granted that his grade would drop below the minimum pass mark.
So on this
morning when he heard that the results were out on the notice board, he rushed
to the department and stepped towards the display glass board with trepidation.
While struggling and pushing through the crowd of students to see his score, as
he later told me, his heart beat almost became audible to people around until
he saw a “B” beside his examination number.
“No, it is not true, I can’t be sure it’s my
score, it could be a mistake” he stared at the list for a while, then pushed
through the crowd and stepped out of the corridor on to the grass lawn beaming
with smiles and telling no one in particular how surprised and excited he was
with the result. That was when he called to tell me that he made a “B” in that
paper. I responded by telling him that he never mentioned anything concerning
the test to me when he returned home the day he sat for the examination. He
promised to tell me the story of what happened on that day and the reason why
he could not discuss it with me when he gets back.
As he was
still standing on the lawn reflecting on how he got memory blank on the day of
the test, he said he recalled looking at the candidates on his left and right
and noticed that they had already written volumes and filled up many pages of
their papers with answers to the questions.
Since the sitting arrangement in the hall was serial according to the
examination numbers, he decided to check on their scores by looking up the
names before and after his own on the posted result. To his surprise, both
candidates failed the paper and will have to come for a re-sit examination on
it.
There are few lessons to learn from this experience;
1. Being a very bright student does not
guarantee that you will not go memory blank in any examination.
2. Preparing very well for the exam is
just one aspect of how to prevent going memory blank.
3. Remaining calm and composed in
examination and being self-assured that you can make it contributes positively
to success.
4. Beyond all these you need to interact
with an experienced professional on the technique that will help keep you ahead
of the problem.
5. The memory recall technique that
works can be of great importance to all students. (we shall discuss more on
this although it was thoroughly analyzed in the E-Book)
6. To be able to apply the memory recall
technique successfully, you must understand how your memory stores information
and how to easily retrieve such information easily.
7. This will guide your study method to
facilitate easy recall of stored information in your memory.
8. This is explicitly presented in the
30 Step Study Guide E-Book.
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