Day 101 of 365 - Memory Work
I can still remember it clearly. It was the summer before going to university and I needed a job. A possibility to work as a waitress in a local pizza joint in my home town came up. I had never done waitressing before, but somehow thought it should be straightforward. Ha! What a cosmic slap in the face it was for me!
As a very good academic student, I had excellent recall of study material I had learned in my courses at school. However, this did not translate to easy remembering or rapid note taking of customer orders in a restaurant. I now understand better the different aspects of brain work involved in those entirely different situations, but, at the time I was baffled and humiliated. Thankfully, an office job elsewhere soon became available and I quit waitressing.
In general, I have a very good memory for detail, and am one of those people about whom friends will say 'Ask Joan, she'll remember', regarding events or situations. Having said that, I have noticed in say, the past five years that perhaps I don't retrieve words or names as quickly as I used to be able.
To stimulate cognitive activity related to word recognition and retrieval, I do play online Scrabble. I also enjoy the Word Power pages in the Readers Digest and the word of the day email from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary site. This is a matter of doing what I can to keep my brain active.
Now, I don't claim that just doing those activities will reverse any underlying physiological process that may be going on contributing to decreased memory function. There is so much being researched about that now. That may be a topic for a separate post.
The reason this topic came to mind for me currently is, that I have been memorizing a new song for my upcoming session of singing classes. I used to be pretty good at rote memorization of words, but it's pretty frustrating to be trying to sing a song and forget the lyrics.
A few years ago, our singing teacher offered a little workshop on her technique for memorizing lyrics. It involves using visual symbols as memory triggers. You still need to have good familiarity with having read the lyrics, but you can use little picture or symbol clues to trigger the memory of the whole phrase. You put them on a blank page going in a clockwise order around a circle, which is a common recognition strategy for our brains.
This has helped me quite a bit. The important thing is to find a visual that is very meaningful to you. Then you are more likely able to make the word or phrase match it. I imagine this is easier for people who are more 'right brain' functioning than me. I tend to be concrete in my thinking, so sometimes it's hard for me to think of an image. I end up drawing a lot of stick people or emoji faces. Once I make a connection though, it sticks.
The real test is putting it into practice during class, when the stress level is up. At least for the first time I do a new song in class, I keep the printed lyrics nearby in case my nervousness overrides my visual symbol memory.
Perhaps that little visual technique is something that could be helpful for you to remember things as well. And also, kudos to restaurant servers or anyone who has a highly developed ability to remember details of customer requests with ease!
As a very good academic student, I had excellent recall of study material I had learned in my courses at school. However, this did not translate to easy remembering or rapid note taking of customer orders in a restaurant. I now understand better the different aspects of brain work involved in those entirely different situations, but, at the time I was baffled and humiliated. Thankfully, an office job elsewhere soon became available and I quit waitressing.
In general, I have a very good memory for detail, and am one of those people about whom friends will say 'Ask Joan, she'll remember', regarding events or situations. Having said that, I have noticed in say, the past five years that perhaps I don't retrieve words or names as quickly as I used to be able.
To stimulate cognitive activity related to word recognition and retrieval, I do play online Scrabble. I also enjoy the Word Power pages in the Readers Digest and the word of the day email from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary site. This is a matter of doing what I can to keep my brain active.
Now, I don't claim that just doing those activities will reverse any underlying physiological process that may be going on contributing to decreased memory function. There is so much being researched about that now. That may be a topic for a separate post.
The reason this topic came to mind for me currently is, that I have been memorizing a new song for my upcoming session of singing classes. I used to be pretty good at rote memorization of words, but it's pretty frustrating to be trying to sing a song and forget the lyrics.
A few years ago, our singing teacher offered a little workshop on her technique for memorizing lyrics. It involves using visual symbols as memory triggers. You still need to have good familiarity with having read the lyrics, but you can use little picture or symbol clues to trigger the memory of the whole phrase. You put them on a blank page going in a clockwise order around a circle, which is a common recognition strategy for our brains.
This has helped me quite a bit. The important thing is to find a visual that is very meaningful to you. Then you are more likely able to make the word or phrase match it. I imagine this is easier for people who are more 'right brain' functioning than me. I tend to be concrete in my thinking, so sometimes it's hard for me to think of an image. I end up drawing a lot of stick people or emoji faces. Once I make a connection though, it sticks.
The real test is putting it into practice during class, when the stress level is up. At least for the first time I do a new song in class, I keep the printed lyrics nearby in case my nervousness overrides my visual symbol memory.
Perhaps that little visual technique is something that could be helpful for you to remember things as well. And also, kudos to restaurant servers or anyone who has a highly developed ability to remember details of customer requests with ease!
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