Synapse by Ian

Synapse by Ian - January 2014 Scholarship Essay

“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” Marilyn Vos Savant understood that true understanding did not come from just memorizing terms out of a textbook. The technique has to take what you are studying, and assimilate it in your life. I find that the most powerful way to transfer something to memory is to find that connection to the everyday.

By associating the concept I am studying with a thought or experience, it is no longer necessary to build new foundations in my mind. It feels more like adding a new floor to an old, reliable memory. Sometimes it can be as simple as pulling words out of a term definition and making a little story out of them. Redundant as it seems, the process gets the student involved. No longer is it the fourth term in the second chapter of the eighth edition of the longest Biology book you have ever owned. It is a piece of your own personal narrative. It hits on every cylinder of your brain’s creative identity.

This becomes even more beneficial as time goes on. The more connections forged to the information being studied, the more routes there are to reach and, subsequently, recall it. I have always likened ideas to neurons. The more roads, or synapses, that are established, the more reflexive an answer becomes, until it borders on something close to instinct.

The information that students are required to study is not always interesting. Knowledge can be a heavy thing at times, and downright unwieldy at others. By switching gears from rote memorization to establishing what the content means to you as an individual, what began as a simple study-session evolves into a participation of the whole. ¬This makes ideas not only easy to remember, but hard to forget.