Memory

(This is a recent post from my LiveJournal @ http://jerster.livejournal.com) I've decided to switch to Blogger because I want to be more involved in some type of community (online, local, online/local hybrid) and LiveJournal simply isn't the cat's meow for such things anymore. So my first two posts on here will be my two most recent posts of my LiveJournal.

Wednesday, April 2nd 2008 - 10:32 a.m. - Memory


I can now see why so many people dread taking biochemistry. We just touched on the subject today in my organic chemistry lecture and wow; so much information all at once.

I am starting to believe that I don't have a good memory, but have come up with reasons to explain the way I feel and how that it is not completely correct. To stop panic attacks and to go to sleep I take medicines that that have amnesic effects because they affect short-term memory to a moderate extent. Nowhere near as much as a drunken blackout, but just enough to where it causes me to stop attributing the memory loss to an event (or substance) and start to think that it is just me or what I've become.

I believe the potential is there for me to learn large amounts of information in little time, but my habits just do not leave me in a state conducive to that. It's not my medicine. It's not my lack of sleep. It's not the alcohol. Though all of these are contributing factors, the major problem is the lack of forming a habit conducive to learning. Homework, practice, re-writing what is in the textbook, joining a study group; these are all the things that need to be going on. What goes on now? Right. None of these. Time-management is my problem and I want to fix it. Motivation... What of it? Maybe money is a motivator for some and it could be for me, but I fall into a class that allows me to neither feel the pain of hunger in poverty nor the supposed comfort of independence in wealth. This middle-class is comfortable I guess, so where is the motivation to escape it?

Ah hah! Staying stagnant in the middle-class leads to poverty. In a welfare state, poverty can even become comfortable. I now see the problem with a welfare state. My apologies for the digression. I do not want to slip into poverty because I would probably not be comfortable there since my life thus far has been in the middle-class. I have to work to stay in the middle-class. Translation: I have to be motivated to stay in the middle-class. Substitution: I have to be motivated to make money. Oops, here we are again. Where does the motivation to make money for the future come from if there is no motivation to escape the middle-class?

One thing is for sure. Motivation is easier to obtain when you are happier. You do not have to be ecstatic; just happier. Lower the stress WITHOUT medicine (hypocritical I know, but I'm getting better). Write! My english class was cancelled and I was feeling overwhelmed by the organic chemistry lecture I just left, so I had time to do something. I was thinking about how bad my memory seems compared to a few years ago (when, I might add, it was almost photographic), then I sequed into my low motivation. I was being a child and blaming my bad attributes on other things at first, then evolved ever so slightly into feeling better, more hopeful about my situation. So, I just turned two negative, practically melancholic feelings into slightly positive feelings. If I can do this more often, then this could be just what I need. Though that involves my major obstacle of forming habits (good ones, at least), this time it seems a bit exceptional. I'm typing to myself, but it's helping. Maybe someone else will read it and do more than say "Oh kay..."