Do You Forget The Material Right After Midterm Exam in College?

A student can easily describe his life in college in four words- Cram-Memorize-Regurgitate-Forget. As the semester-end exams approach, students across whole of the nation can been seen spending a majority of their waking hours, which automatically extend during this period, dedicated to this 4-word ritual. It is only during this time that students try their best to shove as much material as they can into their brain banks, hoping to retain it just long enough to puke it back on the day of the final exam. And, once they expel the crammed information on to their answer sheets, it gets banished from their minds and they never care to think of it again.

This is the model of education in higher studies these days, followed across the globe. This dominant paradigm has been awarded with many names- drill and kills, rote learning or the banking approach to exams.

In schools, students are subjected to a more systematic and rigorous way of learning-weekly tests, class tests, surprise tests before the exams. This system is known as Manifest function, which checks a pupil’s progress through standardized tests regularly. Through this the students are able to retain a majority of the concepts, throughout the school life.

But, in colleges a lament mode of education is followed is based on latent functions of cramming and puking, which in the long run awards us with nothing more than that dysfunctions. Elaborating on this, many years of cramming, memorizing, regurgitating, and forgetting, leaves students with little or no intellectual curiosity, much less a sense of academic excitement. Students, often just mug up before exams, only to pass the exams.

Yes, it very normal to forget the syllabus after your exams, and this is faced by almost all the college students alike. The only reason to this problem are the last minute mugging up of syllabus. If students and colleges promote a more systematic way to check the progress in addition to the mid-semester exams (Midterm exam) and term-end exams. This can help eliminate the problem of forgetting syllabus post exams to an extent, since students will be subjected to concepts more often than otherwise, and hence retain the concepts better. The way to learn is iteration, and if we learn and forget, it is equivalent to forgetting.

Often, we do not require the concepts learnt in college immediately after graduation, but when we actually go down the field. So, it is very imperative that you understand the concepts and content, so that you can give your optimum performance on the job. Otherwise, soon you’ll repent not doing so when you’ll run into a problem that requires the concepts. Expose yourself to the curriculum content, make notes of the classes you attend, memorize it. This way you’ll be able to remember it and have access to the knowledge resources when you require them.

_{Featured Image: etownian}