It might be the physical act of highlighting helped them remember, kind of like taking notes at a lecture help you remember the lecture even if you never consult the notes.
This is 100% true.
I went through SharePoint training last month and it didn’t stick, but I had a chance to attend it again and I took notes. It all stuck that time, and I doubt I’ll ever go back to those notes but they already did their job.
If I read something, highlight, then hear it and take notes, then discuss it with someone (which includes making fun of the presenter)… I’ll never forget it.
The theory is that different delivery systems use different parts of your brain.
Cite: a “Prepare For College” class my parents signed me up for in the early '70s. Put on by the YMCA, of all places.
I was so ADD that I credit that class for enabling me to survive academia.
It unfortunately doesn’t work for me. I can’t write and listen at the same time. It’s one or the other. If the speaker is slow enough, I can timeshare between writing and listening, but that still reduces my comprehension because I can’t think about what they’re saying.
My best learning mode is to read everything beforehand and then listen to someone explain it.
I also can’t read aloud and comprehend the words I’m saying. My brain is not normal.
I had a professor who made notes for his lectures available at a nearby copy shop, “so that people could concentrate on listening.” You could buy the notes before the class and read along. And you’d know that if it wasn’t in the notes, it wouldn’t be on a test. I approved. I bought the notes.
Numerical methods.
It’s the opposite for me. My brain moves weirdly fast and any live teacher is too slow for me. I need something else to fill in that time gap or my brain will wander. Notes give me something to do and since it’s related to what I’m hearing, it helps it stick.
Of course, just give me something to read and I’ll learn it easier than anything else. That, or doing it hands-on. A combination of those two things is absolutely the best thing for me, that’s how I learned 99% of my IT skills. Hardly any of it is from instruction because instruction doesn’t work on me.
I’m like you. Even grad school was excruciating because of the slow pace of info delivery by a live instructor.
Which is why the modern trend to video is worse than useless to me. I can read a chapter in the time a youtuber can say hello and tell you the topic of their vid. And that’s before we get into YouTube’s monetization process driving folks to cram 30 seconds-worth of info into a 7-1/2 minute video. Gaah! Spare me!
I had a college teacher that handed out the lecture notes at the start of each class. He was aware that each time he’d put up a new sheet (on the overhead projector) no one was paying attention to him as they were scrambling to copy everything (important or otherwise), just so they could memorize it well enough to regurgitate it on the next test. He’d rather give us the notes so we can sit back and listen to him talk and engage in more of a back and forth with him.
In that same (psych) class, while he was doing his lecture, I’d be doing my Calculus homework. Partially because I hadn’t done it yet, but also because, like you, I needed something to keep me focused. For my ADHD brain, my math homework being due in an hour is what did it for me.
He asked me about it once but seemed satisfied when I explained to him that I participate quite a bit and I’m clearly following along with the lecture as shown by the fact that I could always answer whatever question he had when he called on me. I also mentioned that if he ever sees me ‘paying attention’, my eyes following him as he paces around the room, I’m almost certainly not paying attention to him and just lost in a day dream.
As much as I really did like the format of getting the notes ahead of time, my brain still needs something to keep it focused. The trick is always finding a balance between being oblivious to what’s going on in the classroom because my brain is wandering and oblivious to what’s going on in the classroom because I’m overly engaged homework for a different class.
Turns out the balance was Adderall. My life, at least WRT school, probably would’ve taken a different path if I went on ADD meds a decade earlier.
Essay in New York magazine:
No, ma’am. It’s not about putting a flaming stick in front of your face. It’s about removing the networked pocket computer screen from in front of your face. THAT will reduce your anxieties.
“I mean, why shouldn’t we all smoke cigarettes again?”
Ok, I must know: How is “Xochitl” pronounced?
(And don’t tell me her-my-knee.)
So-cheel
Haven’t encountered that name in particular but it seems entirely consistent with the way Nahuatl place names and words are spelled, like Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) or Axolotl.
Googling reveals that Xochitl is indeed a Nahuatl name meaning “flower”, and also a brand name for chips sold in Mexico. Xo is pronounced So and Chitl is like Cheel.
Apparently it’s a decently common name in Mexico. Most Mexican-Americans I know have Spanish derived names rather than Nahuatl ones, but I gather it’s not that uncommon in Mexico.
Gesundheit!
Merci
That woman’s just one dope, but why does New York Magazine platform her and encourage self-destructive behavior? Aside from trying to drum up interest in their rag through rage-baiting, of course.
Considering the responses here alone, do they really need any more reason than that?
“Throatwarbler Mangrove”
Maybe they saw all the buzz that the New York Times got for its opinion piece/podcast encouraging shoplifting and got jealous.
In other words: