Students learn memory techniques
by Anne McDonald, reporter

    Two main keys to memory are making it visual and making it bizarre, a South Campus counselor said recently.

   Annie Dobbins told six females and one male how to use their memory properly to be effective students. Her presentation, Improving Your Memory Helps Raise Your Grades, included a video and memory test.

   Dobbins demonstrated three types of memory: sensory (subliminal), short term and long term. To describe subliminal memory, she referred to Ozzy Osbourne and subliminal satanic images on MTV.

   Dobbins said many companies have illegally used subliminal messages to subconsciously put ideas in viewers’ heads. Flashing a picture of popcorn during a movie was another example.

   “Bin Laden and David Koresh use sensory memory in a negative way,” she said.

   Dobbins described short-term memory in terms of remembering a person’s phone number and long-term memory in terms of riding a bike or tying a shoe.

   Memory Skills: Power Learning, a video, described in greater detail how to use the techniques

   Dobbins discussed remembering details, names and facts by making them visual and bizarre.

   The speech almost did not take place. Dobbins had cancelled it the previous week because of the volume of students needing advising for the spring semester. When she heard students had not heard of the cancellation and were waiting for the speech, she came.

   “When he told me you guys were here, I said, ‘Let me get my stuff, and I’ll be there,’” she said.

   She was 20 minutes late, but the speech lasted an hour past the scheduled end time of 1:30 p.m.

   The video, a Learning Seed Production, is available in the TCC South Campus Library.