# I suck at retaining information



## letitrock (Jan 10, 2009)

Does anyone else have trouble retaining information?

I don't know if it's that my brain sucks or it's that I don't study well, or is it that I'm missing something? Like learning **** during a class isn't enough, maybe my classmates also periodically study on their own after that semester is over to retain this necessary information? Now that I think about it, that's kind of an obvious good idea, like, whoopsy, I'm starting to forget this ****, lemme go over my old papers again cause this is stuff I have to know for my career

I will say that I am a huge procrastinator, I haven't used flashcard as a study method in a LONG time, and even though I find the stuff that's taught in my classes interesting which is important since it will be part of my career, it hasn't been enough to snap me out of my procrastination into reading a textbook, I just wanna look at pretty pictures

I will also say that when I'm taking a lecture type class, again even though I find the information interesting, I tend to daydream and not pay attention during class, and I only study well enough to get a B, I never FULLY understand the ideas, I just study well enough to get a B-it's like I procrastinate so much I only have enough time to study to make a C on a test, and make a B overall.

Did I just answer all my own questions?


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## FitchForce (Jan 3, 2011)

I don't see the point in remembering stupid things you've learned in college. I would say 90% of what I learned has nothing to do with what career I'm going into. Only the last year is when I learned the stuff I really wanted. When you know exactly what you want to do you don't focus on the other stuff. If you are talking about remembering stuff that is going to apply to what you really want to do, then doing a brush up every now and then is a good idea.


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## MojoCrunch (Mar 25, 2011)

I have horrible memory retention. Had to work almost extra hard in school to just to get the decent grades that I did. Hell, I will read entire posts on SAS and forget everything that was said. Maybe it's my short term memory. Whatever.

I had a similar problem to this and managed to work around it. First of all, lectures were absolute hell. Which probably means I had terrible listening skills, but I just cannot sit through a 45 minute class listening to someone talk. The thing that will help you get A's fastest is just learning the concepts. I think a lot of people get trapped into having to study a certain way - usually in a more difficult way. As in they had to first read the whole textbook chapter, then go through the notes, then go through the lecture. That just wastes time and you end up doing what feels like arduous work then actually learning something.

Ironically enough, the less time I spent on some classes the better I did. For my recent class which most people fail or do poorly in, I didn't even bother getting the text book. His notes were sufficient enough and I would basically go through chunks and chunks of it every day for only an hour or two. Just focused on little parts. If you are a visual learner, which it seems to be, I think this would be the best method for you.


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