Remembering stuff
When studying for exams, you usually stick to your method if it’s worked in the past. But perhaps, with a little luck, you might end up discovering something new that seems to help a whole lot more.
Usually, you then smack yourself on the head for not thinking of this other method beforehand.
Well, it happened to me three days ago.
On the 19th, Apple posted a new “hot news” item, which went straight into my RSS reader, alongside the App Store price changes and Facebook notifications. Entitled “Study less, remember more”, I felt inclined to look. After all, I am in my studying period.
The story linked to the iTunes Store, and more specifically to the iTunes U page of the Continuing and Professional Studies Office at Texas A&M University. In their list of audio podcasts, one caught my eye: “How to recall practically anything!”. I smiled. Who wouldn’t? It sounds just like an internet scam.
Nevertheless, I listened. In their part 2 of that podcast, they mention a method whose concept I knew, but which I’d never tried out. The example they gave was sufficient to convince me to try: a story about the Lion King jumping on a filing cabinet and causing great damage to its surroundings, with Einstein and Darwin involved. I can’t remember half the elements they were meant to represent, but that’s because I don’t have to study the structure of the animal kingdom (I know the words kingdom, class, genus and species were involved, but that’s about it).
The concept is very simple: make a short story, as a string of keywords representing your study material. My first thought, as someone who had studied Dutch, was the ‘t kofschip mnemonic rule. But no, this method is more complex, because you’re not trying to find “one word to describe them all”. You’re trying to find a story.
All right.
I gave it a try in European Competition Law. The conditions for an oligopoly (as listed by the European Court of Justice – ECJ), to be more precise. There are five: conscience of a common interest, transparency of the market, the capacity to control the markets, the capacity to sanction competitors who don’t respect the rules established together, and the limited possibility of reaction by others.
Translated into a mnemonic story, it gives the following: your conscience is a transparent entity which controls and can sanction you, and there’s little you can do against it. Bam. I know my oligopoly.
Second case of application: this 22nd of December, in Law of the International Relations of the European Union. The conditions for preemption as set by the ECJ in its Opinion no. 1/94: the European Communities are supposed to have an exclusive external competence (they can conclude international treaties on one subject, and Member States lose that possibility) if Community Law states that it will apply to citizens of third States, if Community Law says that the Community can negotiate agreements with third States or if the Community has done a total harmonisation.
As a small sentence, the periscope (preemption – not quite a keyword, but a similar word) targets third parties, helps with negotiation and aims for complete harmony.
There. I feel wiser already. And I can stop hitting myself on the head for now.
I never thought I’d say that, but thank you Texas. And thank you Apple for featuring that section of iTunes U.