Please. I beg you, speak! The Polish final was horrific last night. I felt relatively well-prepared beforehand (except for obscure vocabulary) but a scary, weird thing happened during the exam: all my knowledge sort of got cuisinarted into a big jumble, until I couldn't remember the simplest things.
Neighbor P came up aferwards and identified this as an actual memory phenomenon. When you review material from a long period of time (2 semesters in this case) some things that were learned previously lose their "place" in past time and essentially compete with material that is occupying more recent time. The brain can't retrieve either one because they are competing for the same space.
Ok, maybe that's not exactly what he said, but that's exactly what it feels like. My memory filing cabinet comes with metadata about when and where I was when I learned something. Seems extraneous, right? - but I think it helps to anchor the material in permanent memory.
I would have been better off to review the last couple of chapters and leave the other stuff alone, and that REALLY sucks, because I spent a LOT of time on Polish, to the detriment of a history paper I just turned in (late). Generally it doesn't matter in the grad school if work is late - most profs are very reasonable - but it's a mark of honor for me to finish stuff on time.
Anyway, I'm hoping that I can erase the studying of the last 10 days and revert my brainiac hard drive to SnoCones 5.3.2005. I am going to work out a plan for studying Polish before I go to Krakow, but I think it would be prudent to let it sit for a few days.
Being "done" is oddly unsatisfying, as it has been in recent semesters. I've already cleaned off my desk and put books away. I've registered for fall classes and for the required TA workshops. Oh! - I have a full year appointment as a TA, conditional on getting through prelims by December 31. Seems do-able from here. I've finished up my degree program application in order to meet with my advisor tomorrow.
Next - a list of things to do before next Tuesday, when we fly to Boston.
Posted by otto0114 at May 11, 2005 02:42 PM