Hi,

I’m in my early 30s and I have an exam coming in less than a month, with about 12 modules to study and know.

I just realized that I‘m bad at taking notes and study in general. probably the reason I wasn’t that good at school when I was younger.

For example, I have to read PDF with about 50 pages/slides each, or more. I always took notes (if we can call it like that) by summarizing or rewriting what’s in the book/pdf/lecture in a shorter manner. But now I know that this method is bad since it doesn’t make me learn the content.

I tried reading, then closing the document and try to write in my own words, but I’m just bad at memorizing this way.

One thing that bug me is that I never know what’s important. For example, I have to study marine ecosystems, from plankton, to necton. Then there is a list of key species and I don’t know if it’s just for general knowledge and I should only know what plankton is and the concepts, or if I should know about those 25 species mentioned.

So, I just write down everything in my notebook.

And now, the exam is coming soon and I barely remember my first few modules… I wanted to rewrite my notes in a better way, but it may be a waste of time for now.

I really don’t know how to study, take notes, and just memorize things. I should have done active recall when I was learning the content as I was reading it. Now, I have to do everything at once.

I’m trying apps to create flashcards, quizzes, summaries, etc.

Sorry if I just seem stupid to not know basic things at my age.

I appreciate your help and support.

literally so clueless when a new material is introduced and some ppl would be like "oh yea this material is related to this old material because abcd" and im like ???? how did you make that connection and remember it?????

I know russian, armenian and english at the moment. I used to know greek and german, studied a bit of gaelic and italian, i'm also learning ukrainian. Thing is i forgot german, greek, gaelic and italian and now im scared to learn or relearn languages coz i fear i will forget them all over again, how do you deal with language retention?

Hello all. First post here, so please go easy on me. :)

To some people, remembering things across different parts of life is a skill they've just figured out.
To others, like me, it's a constant struggle. I would take a photo of something at the shop, leave myself a voice memo while walking or even type a note mid-conversation, and very soon, completely forget any of it exists.

I'm doing some informal research into how people actually capture stuff they want to remember later (notes, photos, voice memos to themselves) and whether it gets acted on or quietly disappears.

The whole thing will take 3 minutes at most.

Google Forms and no email is required:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXC30FCuDY-N4wHMMVUCI3VNPfO4cK4zaD3q1EXSVWd8Dg2g/viewform

Happy to share the aggregate results back here once I've got enough responses.

Thank you!