A Penny For Your Thoughts

Imagine a penny. It’s an everyday object that we’ve seen countless times in our lives. If I asked you to draw it, could you? Most people would say yes, but take a look at the picture below and see if you can find the real penny…

Did you find it? If you think so (and you didn’t cheat!), how sure are you that you’ve picked the right one? How, after years of interactions with pennies, is it possible that we still don’t know what a penny looks like? (The answer is A - and yes, I had to pull one out of my piggy bank to be sure.)

Here’s another scenario. How many times have you gone to class to take a test feeling pretty confident, only to receive a grade lower than you thought you deserved? I know it’s happened to me a few times, even after going over a subject with my private SAT tutor. I thought I understood the material because when I studied, it sounded familiar and made sense, yet my score didn’t reflect my “knowledge.” In both of these examples, we see the same mistake being made. People are just not good at knowing how much they know.

So, how can we avoid these common misjudgments of our learning?

First, we have to know why they happen. Most often, we misjudge how much we know because we don’t realize that attention plays a huge role in learning. Even though we see pennies all the time, it doesn’t mean we ever really look closely and pay them enough attention to be able to select the correct one from a line-up. Similarly, if we just passively review information while studying, we are not focusing enough attention on the task and end up with a surprisingly low grade.

In order to remember valuable information and perform better on tests, we have to monitor our learning better. Studying is difficult because it requires attention, so you have to actively focus on what you want to learn. Instead of simply re-reading information to try and learn it, try testing yourself. Just the act of generating the answer yourself will help you retain it better. Another way to understand the material better is to teach. If you can explain it to someone else, and they can understand it too, then you know that you understand it really well.

Another thing that trips us up when studying is that if we think that something is easy to understand or process, we assume that we know it and that we will remember it. However, the nature of learning and memory isn’t that simple. The level at which we process information is one of the main things that affects how we learn and remember. If you only memorize facts, you are processing the information at a shallow level, but if you understand the meaning and implications of that information, you are processing it at a much deeper level which in turn helps you remember it better. By making associations between the things you want to remember, you are giving them deeper meaning. If you can actively learn and relate material to your life or try to make a story out of facts, you are guaranteed to remember information a lot better.

I’m not saying you should go study a penny, but as you can see it’s too easy to “not learn” something you see every day. If you really want to remember something or understand it completely, the key is to monitor your attention level and focus on active learning. Good luck studying!

*This week's blog was contributed by Launch's intern Alicia Bullock!