Created
04/21/06

Related Items
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Materials
- Leather-bound notebook
- Rapidly fading knowledge of vector calculus

I realized some time ago that 90% of the stuff learned in a college course is forgotten within two to three months after the final exam. I find this especially troubling because I went into debt to the federal education loan program up to my eyeballs in order to learn all that stuff. In an effort to hang onto it, I started keeping a running summary of my classes in a durable leather-bound journal (made by Hippo Leather Products) that I picked up at the Oregon Country Fair one year. At the end of each term I try to set aside several hours of time to sit down with all of my notes, organize and condense them, and put them down on paper in a concise and well-ordered fashion.

Because it was written by me, in my own words, it always reflects the way in which I think. This means that when I need this information several months to a year down the road when it's all but forgotten, I can crack open this book and immediately understand the contents, quickly reacquiring all that lost knowledge. This is not the case with a standard textbook - I crack open a textbook and then proceed to spend most of my time trying to interpret the author's thought process. With my notebook, that processing is already done. It's like downloading a burst of information right to my brain through my eyes!

This is what an entire term of vector calculus looks like in 'downloadable form'. Five pages and a half-page synopsis (not pictured).