I've always had a terrible memory, both short-term and long-term. But this has been an advantage, in a way: I could never memorize material and bluff my way thr

I've always had a terrible memory, both short-term and long-term. But this has been an advantage, in a way: I could never memorize material and bluff my way through. Instead, to remember it, I had to understand it. I think this helps partly because you can always work it out from first principles (and just remembering there's some tricky bit somewhere around here), partly the familiarity required for understanding helps embed it, but mostly that I've distilled it to a very simple model in my mind, that I've related to other systems I already know. The meta-model becomes the more interesting thing. It's hard work to uncover this model, often requiring chasing up foundations, to see what's really going up. And of course, sometimes you end up with the wrong model (or a limited one). Unfortunately, most subjects don't seem to be taught in terms of understanding - but I've had some rare lecturers and textbooks that are so clear, you can work out what they'll say next, and solve example problems the first time you see them. I've always thought this understanding-oriented approach is a strong long-term strategy, as I age. Although it means some subjects are too hard for me - like human languages, history, geography, biology, medicine... and enterprise application development (but I'm good at libraries).