While still going to school as children we tend to focus on passing exams, rather than improving ourselves. This might be caused by the mentality pushes on us by the society and our parents. Our parents only want the best for us, yet focussing so much on the points can be detrimental for our growth, maybe not in first instance but after your graduation.
Many people focus on learning the information memorizing it just so it happens that we don’t fail a course cause we can’t remember something. What this causes us to do is allowing us to recite it word by word instead of understanding what we are learning. In the long run it is much better to understand it than knowing each word for a short amount of time. One of my exams in the past was purely focussed around reciting every word correctly, while this wasn’t told us during the course. If it was everyone would temporarily adapt this method of studying. But it wasn’t so some focussed on understanding the subject and were punishes for it.
Much learning does not teach understanding. – Heraclitus
What the story above tells us is that even very knowledgeable teachers can forget what teaching is about. Knowing your subject by heart rarely helps you remember the information later in life. That being said knowing how to remember is a good ability to have and use when needed. If told during a course that the exam is focussed around writing definitions word by word you can apply this method.
The goal of this article isn’t to bad mouth on one method of learning. Rather to let you think about the different methods of learning and to allow you to experiment with them. The more methods you have in you bag the better results you will have. Don’t blindly apply the same learning method over and over again. Cause it may result in ok grades, but in less improvement in the long run.
Find the learning methods and improve the way to use them. So that you can get better in due time.