November has been a hectic month ever since I started teaching. Many times we celebrate Diwali during November and always we have exams hovering during this period. Whatever that has been learnt in last twelve sessions for most of the subjects is to be described in such a fashion that will help to get better grade. This goes on batch after batch and year after year. The question is ‘Are we testing memory’? The answer may be ‘yes’ for some and ‘no’ for others. And I won’t rule out a certain percentage that says ‘may be’.
Memory is important, but not for reproduction on the answer book what you have read or heard during the semester. Memory is important to store the concepts that one has understood. The concepts should find a place in the ‘memory bank’. The concepts are like investments in ‘Gold’. These investments have liquidity. There is no point is investing in a currency that has no liquidity, has no value. No one would like to keep in term deposit millions of any soft currency that has diminishing value. You can’t use that investment at the time of crisis. Gold will come to rescue at that moment. A small quantity of gold can be of more worth than a large quantity of currency that has negligible liquidity. Therefore using storage space of the memory bank should be for the concepts. The concepts can be explained and this happens automatically. The one who has clarity of the concepts can elaborate the same. One who has not understood the concepts will search for words. A good classical singer (of Indian classical music) can sing a bandish (बंदिश) for hours, only when he knows the basics. Someone with firm base goes on for hours while others can ‘finish’ that bandish in few minutes. Why this happens? Give a thought. Extend this example to exams. When concepts are clear one can write pages, if one lacks clarity then answers are over in half a page. Therefore the answer to the question, ‘are exams for testing memory’ will be yes, but testing memory for recounting the concepts.
Use memory for the files that are zipped, condensed. You can store more. Delete unwanted files, make some room. You do delete some files to make your computer run faster. This can help to perform better and faster. During my exam days, I generally stopped reading the notes at least twelve hours before the exam. I would avoid loading those files that would affect the speed and performance of my brain. I would go for a movie or listen to music. I would decongest my memory bank, make more RAM available and may be it worked for me. One can always argue that those days were different, competition was different etc. Yes it was, but remember every era has its own complexities. We had no computers. There was no internet. Source of information was college library and teachers. The technological advancement was not there (relative). Means of communication were not available. Lal Bahadur Shastri used to swim across the river to reach the school. So let us not get in to comparison. Our brain still works (biologically) in the same fashion as it worked earlier. Basics are still basics and we should learn that well. So cheer up, decongest your memory, remove unwanted programmes, load it with sound fundamentals and use it appropriately in answering the questions, not only in exams but also in life. There is no room for failure. You are going to succeed.
Best luck
