It is Not about Memory!

I dozed off the whole of the first period of the listening class. And the second period I was relatively lucid. When Ms Wang called me to answer again, she praised me for "good memory".

How many times have i said this is not about memory? What a pity you hear none of them. As a teacher you are misleading the students. And i hereby will reiterate to myself that if i can remember something better than anyone else to the extent that they began to praise my good memory, it is because i know more and deeper than that, this is too easy for me and i can easily see through it, not to say remember or analyse it.

The meaning of this awareness might not just be confined to the narrow and specific area of English Listening. It might be employed to explain anything i come across that i want to remember. I am reading the book Does the Center Hold? I really want to remember how Rene Decartes came up with the Cognito ergo sum thing. But it was really hard for me. I don't try too hard to memorize it because it will be futile. If the accounts in the book is easy for me, i would have remembered them immediately after the first sight. So what i need to work on is not to force myself memorizing them, but to understand.

But furthermore, if i can't understand them, it could be due to various reasons. First, i might not be focusing on the whole subject while reading. This also is due to the fact that i am not familiar with the words or concepts and therefore can't grasp the core of the meaning- what i manage to come by is some fuzzy image or nothing at all rather than its specific meaning. Second, i have not enough experience to refer to and ponder on. Thus my understanding or probing doesn't have enough room to exercise its power.

April 27, 2009