There’s a lot of thinking going on this week on this here blog. After today it stops. Right?
Well anyway. I was thinking about thinking last week and specifically how we think and remember things. When I do the odd bit of study for my Law degree and attend lectures, the only way I recall things is visualising the “story” I’ve read and heard about. Writing it down is all well and good but the text is only the crib notes for the visual masterpiece that I see in my brain when I commit it to memory.
I’d never put much thought into how I thought about things and how I remembered things but when i did some research (yeah I Googled) I found that visual thinking isn’t very common. So I asked people on Twitter how people thought. The answers varied wildly. How interesting.
Today is Leaving Cert results day with people doing really well and not so well and breaking down after years in the grind of trying to commit things to memory and then bringing them back and putting them down on paper. What ways did they do this? How do they put that information in and take it back out?
Do you see images? I see full in-depth movies with colour and wonderful layers if I have to recall facts about legal cases, I see the colour of uniforms, wonderful diamond encrusted rings and dark wooden floored barren houses when it comes to cases about the Law of Property. I see ginger beer and taste it and my stomach slightly turns at seeing a snail inside the bottle when I think about the Law of Tort.
As I mentioned in this blog post, I look like I’m daydreaming or switched off when I’m paying full attention. I guess I am daydreaming in a way.
What works for you? How does your brain work?
