We had an amazing trip over President’s Day weekend. We went snowboarding in New Hampshire. Unbelievable. My wife’s cousin has a place two minutes from Waterville Valley and we finally made it up there. It just happened to snow two feet the week before we got there. I’ve never been out of the Poconos; this was a whole different world.
Anyway, with conditions like that, and the fact that it was a holiday weekend, you can imagine it was a little crowded. So as a devoted father and husband, I dropped everyone off at the lodge and went looking for somewhere to park. Down down down I went to lot #8. As I began the walk back up the mountain to the lodge, I spent exactly 3 seconds memorizing which lot I was in, and I knew with 100% confidence that I’d remember. I did it with a little mental trick I call linking.
I grabbed the #8 and made the link to something I already knew: Yogi Berra’s number was 8 (No, that’s not a typo… for those of you who aren’t sports fans, Yogi Berra is a baseball player). Later in the day when I’d think of the parking lot, I know I’d stumble into Yogi Berra and remember the number 8. Linking is one of the easiest memory techniques; you can use it for basically anything. Even better, it also means that the more you know, the more you can know. I know the house number for my friends up the block. Not because I “know” their house number, but because I know it in relation to mine. You’re not memorizing facts in a vacuum.
Hmmmm.. That’s a pretty good line right there. Let me write it again. A Wallace original. Ooh wait. Let me put it in italics with quotes around it and put my name after it…
“You’re not memorizing facts in a vacuum.” – Brian Wallace
There you go. Now it’s official.
Ok, where were we? Oh yeah. Study things as they relate to the world around you. Don’t memorize lists. That’s way too hard.
Like my kids learning to snowboard. They’d go full speed down the hill for 15 feet and then crash into a pile of wet, cold, pain. It was better after they got a lesson.
This month in PAES that’s exactly what I’m giving you, a lesson. If you’re serious about your grades and about what you learn, stop plowing down the mountain, full speed, thinking, “if I only work longer and harder it will get better.”
No, it won’t. You need a lesson. It isn’t your fault. It wasn’t my kids fault they couldn’t snowboard, but they still needed a lesson.
Ok I’ve taken that analogy a bit far.
Get the March issue before Saturday night. That’s when it heads off to the printer, and this one covers EXACTLY how much detail to go into on a topic. This is very likely the most important issue I’ve written to date.
Get your frozen fingers on it here:
Physician Assistant Exam Scholar’s Newsletter
Brian Wallace