Course set for next 9 months

I finally signed up for my next course yesterday. It begins on the 4th October. It's so nice to see it listed on my home page. I've waited quite a while to get to this point. There is a residential school associated with this course which I would really like to sign up to but there are a number of problems with that. Not least of which is that it is a week away from home at a time when a) the exam for the main course is due and b) the colleges are on summer vacation. Both these events add an extra burden. In addition, the local government elections are likely to be in June sometime and my workload will shoot through the roof at that point. It also depends on how well my progress is on the main course. I won't really know this until at least January/February.

I finished Dominic O'Brians "Learn to remember" finally this lunch time. It provides a number practical ways of retaining information. They actually do work too! Using both the PEG and Journey methods, I'm starting to retain more information then I thought possible. The trick is associate things with visual memories that create interest and the best ones  are those that are a little odd. For example. On the radio this morning was a news article about the world food shortage and how this would become an acute problem in the next 20 years or so. The program was detailing a variety of novel ways the world can meet demand and most of them where turning to science for the answers. For example, growing meat in a dish. Which brings me to the thing I wanted to remember. They talked about "invitro meat" and I wanted to look into this further. I would normally write this down or voice memo it on my phone but instead, I associated it with a vivid picture of a pig using Microsoft Messenger. Thus the association, Invitro Meat = Instant Messaging, Meat=Pig (The meat they where growing in the dish consisted of a clump of pig cells). Viola!  I now remember, and will probably always remember Instant Messaging as Invitro Meat. Ooh, I hope this is a good thing.

So, the next few weeks will be about putting Dominic's suggestions into practice and also tidying and de-cluttering my life and mind in preperation for the next 9 months of sheer hard work.