Flash! Ah-ah! Saviour of the universe!

I study using flash cards. I have a little program which lets me create and edit cards and orders them for me based on how long it has been since I last saw it and how well I thought I remembered the card the last time. I really like studying this way since my brain seems to respond better to interactivity rather than just reading and writing stuff out.

It does take a bit of time to get the knack of writing good cards. You need to ask very specific questions and the answer needs to be fairly brief. List of things are harder to remember than sequential processes. It helps to put key terms in bold because that seems to stimulate my visual memory. You know how you can often remember where on page something interesting was written, even if you can't remember the thing itself? With flash cards, scattered text in bold helps to make each card look a little bit different which I think helps me remember them.

However, I learned a valuable lesson today, which is this:

If you are studying with flash cards, you should review them as you make them, day by day. Do not spend a week making flash cards and then sit down to review several hundred of them all at once. It's really demoralizing.