Do you remember how to spell all of those words you let the spellcheck catch? Do you remember what fraction of a teaspoon of salt goes into that one recipe, or would you look at the list of ingredients to be sure? Do you remember what kinds of plastic they recycle in your neighborhood, or do you delegate that task to a list attached with a magnet to the fridge?
I don’t know if this says anything important or relevant, but I remember nearly all of these things. Spelling, in my first language of English, anyway, is effortless for me. I always end up memorizing things like recipes because, well, I use them. And hate having to take time to look it up, so I deliberately try to learn “shortcuts”, for example “all cookie recipes have 1 teaspoon baking soda”. I have occasionally kept calendars, and it was a big stress reliever, but it was also time consuming and mostly unnecessary–I don’t forget that I got called in for a random weeknight shift at the hospital, or that I have an appointment on X day.
I think this is secondary to two factors. A) I have a pretty encyclopedic memory. I read literally thousands of books as a child, and to this day I can dredge up a significant fraction of the major plot of almost any of them, and actual quotes if I read them more than once. To me this is normal, but my mom is surprised when I remember things like that, so I guess it’s uncommon. B) I don’t like wasting time, and having to look stuff up that’s easy to remember, for me, and that I use frequently feels like wasting time.
I do tend to store the minimum. For example, once I find out the due date for a school project, I’m pretty unlikely to forget the date and have to look it up, but that doesn’t mean I’ll bother to learn anything about the content of the project until I plan on starting it, and finishing it shortly thereafter.
Throughout nursing school, I’ve often “known” things in the sense of “I would have a 100% grasp of it quite easily with 2 minutes of looking stuff up.” This is useful in areas like pharmacology, where the underlying structure (drug classes and mechanisms of action) is fairly logical and interesting, and thus easy to remember, but the surface structure (generic and commercial names and the side effects that aren’t an example of the drug being ‘too effective’) is ridiculously difficult to memorize. That being said, my non-looking-up grasp is about 90%–enough to get really good grades in theory classes without being able to look stuff up on the spot, but not enough to feel comfortable actually treating patients without re-looking it up.
I’ve also noticed that I “purge” my autobiographical memory–as if I’m making more space for data that I find interesting. I’m very good at staying on top of day-to-day life and remembering due dates and work shifts and stuff, but I’m hard pressed to think of more than ten specific episodes that I remember from elementary school. I know the general ‘story’ of my childhood but I don’t bother to retain the details–which means that I often don’t understand my younger self’s thoughts and decisions very well.
I don’t know if this says anything important or relevant, but I remember nearly all of these things. Spelling, in my first language of English, anyway, is effortless for me. I always end up memorizing things like recipes because, well, I use them. And hate having to take time to look it up, so I deliberately try to learn “shortcuts”, for example “all cookie recipes have 1 teaspoon baking soda”. I have occasionally kept calendars, and it was a big stress reliever, but it was also time consuming and mostly unnecessary–I don’t forget that I got called in for a random weeknight shift at the hospital, or that I have an appointment on X day.
I think this is secondary to two factors. A) I have a pretty encyclopedic memory. I read literally thousands of books as a child, and to this day I can dredge up a significant fraction of the major plot of almost any of them, and actual quotes if I read them more than once. To me this is normal, but my mom is surprised when I remember things like that, so I guess it’s uncommon. B) I don’t like wasting time, and having to look stuff up that’s easy to remember, for me, and that I use frequently feels like wasting time.
I do tend to store the minimum. For example, once I find out the due date for a school project, I’m pretty unlikely to forget the date and have to look it up, but that doesn’t mean I’ll bother to learn anything about the content of the project until I plan on starting it, and finishing it shortly thereafter.
Throughout nursing school, I’ve often “known” things in the sense of “I would have a 100% grasp of it quite easily with 2 minutes of looking stuff up.” This is useful in areas like pharmacology, where the underlying structure (drug classes and mechanisms of action) is fairly logical and interesting, and thus easy to remember, but the surface structure (generic and commercial names and the side effects that aren’t an example of the drug being ‘too effective’) is ridiculously difficult to memorize. That being said, my non-looking-up grasp is about 90%–enough to get really good grades in theory classes without being able to look stuff up on the spot, but not enough to feel comfortable actually treating patients without re-looking it up.
I’ve also noticed that I “purge” my autobiographical memory–as if I’m making more space for data that I find interesting. I’m very good at staying on top of day-to-day life and remembering due dates and work shifts and stuff, but I’m hard pressed to think of more than ten specific episodes that I remember from elementary school. I know the general ‘story’ of my childhood but I don’t bother to retain the details–which means that I often don’t understand my younger self’s thoughts and decisions very well.