Here it is.

Here it is.

I would like to welcome everybody to this board. Hopefully we will be able to form a group of at least 3-5 people right in the beginning so we can start to build this thing.

Please use this topic to say hi and give your first impressions about the forum and the idea itself.
Thanks.

Well hi there.

I just want to say that learning will be very tedious until you finally connect with the subject. I'm in the process of trying to figure out how to do this. It happened accidentally with my English literature class a few days ago, and it was already there for me for math and science. Working on History atm.

I would love to see what happens with this!

Welcome. It's great to have the first person joining.

How do you define connecting with a subject? Is it just having some general interest in that field or developing a more personal view?

Hm... this could be hard to describe. I'll rant a little and just hope I come to some coherent point eventually.

At first, I thought English class was rather pointless and stupid. Then I saw a quote by Robert Heinlein:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write a sonnet, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects."

That really started me thinking about things. Later, in a rather pointless debate, I did a literary analysis of a video game to support my argument. This was actual a real analysis, instead of just remembering what other people say about the work and spewing that out on paper. I saw the game in a different light, and the story was far more beautiful.

I then had kind of a flashback to English class last year. One phrase the teacher would use a lot is "This is good stuff here!" while expounding on some theme or whatever. I realized that just as I saw all kinds of beautiful connections in mathematics and physics that instantly made sense, he saw the same kind of connections in these literary works. Now, school hasn't yet resumed since I made that discovery, but I'm willing to bet that when it does, no one will understand the literature we're reading better than me.

Does that make sense?

From my perspective it seems that what you described is a combination of deep understanding and interest. But to have one you have to have the other first. So it's great that you have subjects you like and can understand.

You have just breached that barrier that separates rote memorization from understanding. When people aren't interested in some class that they are required to complete, they basically do the least work possible and simply memorize the facts. Once you learn to make those connections between all of the different aspects of a field, you are set. But I've got a new goal for you now. Try to relate your newfound understanding of literature to your more complete and solid understanding of the sciences and maths.

Hey Zoner, welcome.

This idea is starting to grow little by little.

Once you learn to make those connections between all of the different aspects of a field, you are set.

Do you have any suggestions how to do that? How should that process look like, what question to ask...?

How can somebody relate two completely different subjects such as literature and math?

well... that is very very difficult. I've been trying to learn to do it myself.
A connection between math and literature will be very different than a connection between themes in literature or a connection between the effects of history on literature or something similar.
When you try to relate math and literature, you are likely to find very very specific connections, as opposed to broader themes mentioned above.
But, if we can make these connections in a reasonable amount of time (this is the difficult part), we know that it is valuable.

The reason why I know it is so valuable is because the more connections we make to a specific idea in our brain, the better we understand it.
That is why classes get subsequently tougher as we pursue our degrees. We don't take general phsyics over and over. We take general phsyics, then classical mechanics, then Electromagnetism, thermodynamics and quantum.
We are taught to combine together ideas from all of these fields, ultimately helping us gain a bettween grasp of physics.

Obscure connections facilitate strong memory. Math and literature could not seem more obscure. Thus, when we combine two ideas between the two, we are likely to remember our connection. When I study for a test, there are always some things that I have trouble remembering but absolutely need to know. This is when I try to make a really obscure connection. It helps me remember these things forever.

How do you make the connection... That is a whole other ballpark. I typically start with what I want to remember. Then I grab the first random-assed idea that comes to my head, and i attempt to relate the two. This strategy works quite effectively for me, and I definitely remember things in the end.

For example (extremely mathbased example.... if you haven't taken enough math to this point, it won't make any sense... but here it goes anyhow), I remembered the associativity of the dot product in multi variable calculus by thinking of Where's Waldo. In where's Waldo, all the faces are thrown everywhere, giving the idea of randomness. Additionally, each face looks like a little dot.
Connect these two ideas together, and you get dots are randomly thrown everywhere. The dots signify the dot product and the randomness of the dots signifies associativity.

Now, I'm sure there is some much more intelligent and enlightening way to relate math and literature, but I haven't figured it out yet, or found a use for it for that matter. But yea, connecting obscure ideas in order to remember difficult things works nicely for me, but it requires a ton of practice. I suppose that you can use equations and graphs to represent ideas... Check out the book Cryptonomicon.

ehh... this is really really hard to try to explain in any brief way. It's like trying to sum up something that I don't understand well myself and that numerous books could be written on all into a single post. We should probably focus on more practical things that are much more valuable.

I began typing up a lot of information on how memories are formed and stuff similar to this. It details a lot of the stuff that I'm talking about right now if you want me to post it all up. It's several thousand words, though

What I would personally like is that we share the specific learning process everybody takes. Meaning, what do you actually do when you pick up a book?

Theoretically we can speak about different things but the question always remains: how can you apply that?

My biggest problem so far with learning in university was the actual process of learning. Meaning: memorizing, not becoming bored and escaping daydreaming.

I don't know if this happened because I've forgotten how to learn or is it just that I don't have the same opportunity for learning as in high school.


My usual way of learning was first just normal book reading a few times. And then what I had remembered I remembered. I did this because I don't like to do root memorization.

However this tactic wasn't so successful, first because the results weren't that great. Maybe you can understand the idea behind a book this way but to pass a test is something different.

And the second problem was getting bored. Even though I was just normally reading I would wonder of pretty easy.



After that I tried the classical memorization process. Read a page, repeat what you remembered; read the page again, repeat again; read again, repeat again...

The results with this are a little better specially if you do this for longer time but it didn't really resolve the problem. Getting bored is even bigger problem because now you are actually torturing your brain. You need even more discipline to get through a learning session.

All that means that the chance of wanting and starting to learn is very small. So in the end I didn't want to learn at all.

I still must say that I had some success with this, but obviously only when I managed to put all my power together to make myself do this. So this isn't the solution either.



Now I'm trying a new approach that seems more promising. To solve the boredom problem I figured that I have to turn my brain on while learning. That means that the brain has actually something to do. Root memorization doesn't do that.

I decided to make notes while reading a book. The notes would be the essence of every chapter and the actual stuff I need to know. To do this the brain now is challenged and it needs to analyze the material and pick the most important stuff. So instead of rereading the material over and over again like in the first two examples, now the idea is to read the material once and then use the notes to further memorize.

This simple idea as it now seems pretty much solved the boredom problem and especially the daydreaming problem.

The third problem, memorization I haven't completely figured out yet. I already memorize a lot just by taking notes but there is a still needed second step. My ideas so far are taking the notes and reorganizing and rewriting them again in to notes2.

This would still keep boredom away and memorizing now would be even easier because of much less material.

The second idea I haven't yet tried out but I'm thinking about writing special questions regarding the notes. This wouldn't be the test questions but my own and the purpose would be to make more connection between different chapters. Then I would write again the responses to those questions so after that I would have:

Notes 1
Notes 2
Answers to special questions


What is, or what was your learning process?

Usually, I only have to read it once or twice. If I can understand the concepts in all their intricacies, I usually end up remembering what I have to. Though after epically failing to antidifferentiate csc(x)^2 yesterday, I may need to re-evaluate.

Some things that I actually had to study to memorize, like the derivatives of inverse trig functions, I did it mainly by staring hard at them until I could recall how it looked. It's not like I have a photographic memory, it's just that I was able to ingrain its image in my mind by concentration. It's lasted for about a month, but it's been getting a bit vague lately. I can barely recall them at the moment. I suppose I ought to re-inforce it once every two weeks or so. I memorized the quotient rule by picturing the numerator and denominator sliding to their respective places, getting the primes in place, etc.

Last year, I memorized the trig identities in a very odd manner. They were taught in class one day, I didn't look at it at all. I went home, and had an amazing dream about math. I awoke with the identities firmly in my mind.

Others, such as the derivatives of tan(x) and sec(x) just feel right and natural, if you know what I mean. This also applies to physics equations and stuff like that too.

I haven't really actually had anything else to memorize in two or three years, so I'm not sure what I'd do for something not as natural. Probably just meditate on it.

Well unfortunately it seems that there are not enough people who are interested in this idea.

I don't want to promote this idea in other places except the sp forum so I'm not sure this will ever start moving.

We'll see...

Hi everyone,

I just found out about this forum today. I hope there will be enough people to continue the forum because I think this will help me stay motivated. I'll introduce myself.

My name is Marije, I'm 18 years old and a freshman at a Dutch university. I major in Computer Science and because my results have been very good so far I'm taking some extra psychology and math classes. In Holland most universities divide the year in four terms and I'm just finishing my second term right now with some exams. I've already done my Computer Architecture and Organisation exam and still have to do Calculus 1 and Social Psyhology next Monday. There's one other class I'm taking but it doesn't have an exam (it's called academic skills for computer science majors).

Even though my results have been great so far (2nd in my year, out of 45), I feel like one of the dumbest people in my year. I don't know much about computers, I never did any serious programming before I started this year and a lot of people ask me for help when their computer breaks down but they always turn out to know more about it than I do. Of course I only just started but I still feel like I should be learning more, maybe learn some stuff by myself.

I'm trying to do as much as possible at the campus. I've joined several clubs (computer science club, social club, salsa club and tae kwon do club) and I'm in 3 commitees (is that what you call them? Groups that organize activities for a club). So I'm kind of busy but it's not too much or anything.

I'm not sure what I expect from this forum, I guess I'll first wait and see if there will be enough people For now, I apologize for my bad grammar, I only started learning English a few years ago

Hey, this forum looks interesting, even though there aren't very many people here yet, but lets stay positive!! Anyway, My name is Lindy, I'm from Indiana, US. I go to a state college called IUSB, and my major is mathematics. I am also tired right now as well, but that's not important . I REALLY need some motivation to help me get up and go to class most times. I feel like it doesn't help me anymore to go to class, almost as if I'm not learning anything... and maybe I'm not really, this is not the best of colleges. But, one thing is that with most any colleges, the program is going to be drawn out, most times classes correspond to semesters. I really lose my interest between the time the semester starts and ends. I feel as if I could learn everything on my own, faster!

Anyway, that's my shortened story! Looking forward to future conversations!!

Hi all, I just want to tell you Im inn.
I will start contributing later today

Well this is great, some new people joining. Welcome.

It seems that we all have different problems which is good because somebody who is having one problem can help somebody else in areas where they are doing fine.

The fastest way to start helping each other here is by continuing to post new updates on stuff we are having troubles with.

If you agree we could make separate topics on specific problems like "motivation" "learning skills", "learning environment", "time management"... and any other problems that are interesting to one of our members? In those topics everybody would post their updates about their progress and new useful information.

*waves at Mulbrich* Nice to see another math major!

I used to have problems with the slow pace of math classes too. I figured that I could always work ahead of the class, but they would cover it eventually, and then I'd be even more bored, so what's the point? Then I realized that not all math was cumulative and started studying set theory on my own.

Here's an idea: at Oberlin College, once a month the math majors get together and have pizza while some instructor teaches them fun, cool stuff that wouldn't typically be covered in class. The example I saw was knot theory. Perhaps if you could convince the math department to organize something like that, or do it yourself, it could give you enough of a spark to go to the classes, so you can do fun stuff like that later on. That worked rather well for me, anyway.