Random: My Messed Up Mind

So, my random post deluge (mini deluge, deluge-ette) has another post.  What have i been thinking about today?  i was thinking about stuff and junk (because both of those are among my favorite thing apparently.  Then i started thinking about a ton of random stuff.

Kids, stay in school.  The real world is much, much, much, much, much worse. 

i settled on my messed up mind.  Maybe it isn't that messed up.  See (or read), when i was in school i kind of optimized they way i recalled information to coincide with the world of multiple choice tests.  i didn't intentionally do this as far as i know, that is just the way it happened.  i optimized it for speed in these situations.  After all, would you rather be taking a test or not taking a test.  Incidentally, i suck at essay questions - i get the right answer, just not in the way the teacher/professor wanted it.  i was a horrible student who never actually studied for anything (because i never really had to) - though i did the homework, sometimes.    

There were plenty of test that i turned in first in school.  In fact, the first test i had in Econ 201 in college left the professor kind of impressed.  He mentioned something about incredible productivity or something.  You would think that he never saw anyone turn in one of his test in less than 5 minutes (i did get an A, by the way).  i think the best example was the Anthropology final i took in my freshman year of college.  i turned in the test (120 questions - multiple choice, true/false, matching, fill in the blank) in under 4 minutes (i know my math skills have faded, with my reliance on Excel, but that is something like under 2 second per question).  i only got an 88% on this one (92% adjusted for the curve, good for second in the class).  The glares from the other students were interesting (the next closest finisher was about 23 minutes later). 

So what is a trick to going fast on multiple choice tests...  active reading.  You know the thing where you underline key words and stuff.  What i found was that multiple choice tests, in particular, the questions had very similar sentence structures.  This basically meant that the nouns and verbs were usually in about the same place in every question.  You don't need to read the whole question - you just have to know the key words, from there it is a matter of matching key words with the available options (which can be done very quickly - as you end up scanning for keywords in the available options too).

i thought that this was just using short-term memory, but occasionally i have this stuff pop back in my mind at random times.  Most times, it seems to be useless stuff (but somewhat clearly). Why do i remember some of the stuff i do?  Why don't i remember some other stuff (outside a kind of hazy recollection).  That is the next question on my messed up mind.  i mean i don't want to know/remember information about an ex-girlfriend i haven't seen in over a decade.  Why should i care that her birthday is September 20th, that her parents (Jim and Jill) drove a maroon Ford Explorer or the names of her pets at the time, who cares if she likes the diverse musical duo of Aerosmith and Reba McEntire or her middle name is/was Ann.  i tried to block out memory that she ever existed (obviously not successfully).