Chan's Personal Blog

I came across an interesting quiz about learning while reading CNN's website. The quiz will tell you how you learn best. This information can be very helpful in school since you'll know what learning methods you respond to the best. The quiz tries to classify people into one of the following three categories: visual learner, tactile learner, and auditory learner.

The quiz is provided by educationplanner.org, and the quiz takes less than 10 minutes to finish.

My results were 40% visual, 30% tactile, and 30% auditory.

The description of the visual learner is as follows:

I can see myself as a visual learner. I think the funny thing about the explanation is, "you are usually neat and clean." Yes, yes I am, I actually bathe. I also remember things better if I see myself writing down notes. I like to read as well. When meeting new people, I also tend to remember their faces but not their names. I'm terrible with new people's names. For new people, I usually address them as, "hey you."

However there are a number of things that are totally not me. For example, I never sit at the front of the class. Those who know me well know that I like to keep a low-profile in class, and remain anonymous, so I sit near the back. There's only a small handful of professors at UVic who actually know my name or recognize who I am. I prefer to remain as a shadow or a phantom in their memories. Colour coding things and making flashcards for studying purposes is probably a good idea as well, but I am far too lazy to do that. My whole academic philosophy is maximize grades with the least amount of effort. I'd rather be known as an efficient student rather than a hard working student.

The whole notion of being an efficient student drives some of my friends insane. I have a few friends who will study for a test two weeks in advance and score maybe a 90% on a test which is an A+. Meanwhile, I would probably start studying two or three days before a test and score an 85% which is an A. We can calculate efficiency by dividing the mark by the number of days spent studying. So, my friend gets 6.43%/day in studying. I on the other hand get 28.33%/day which is clearly more efficient. In addition, I believe that if you start studying too early, you'll end up forgetting some of the material as the week progresses. That's how I justify cramming .

Note: Cramming is not for everyone. I do not recommend that everyone become an "efficient student" who crams, as results may vary drastically. I assume no responsibilities of your academic grades if you so choose to adopt this strategy.

In either case, tell me how you scored.

On Friday I finished my last exam for the summer. It was a pretty long exam. Normally exams are scheduled for 3 hours, but usually the exam is designed to be finished in 2 hours, but you can have the entire 3 hours to write it. This exam I wrote felt like it was designed for exactly 3 hours. I only saw a handful of people leave at the 2h 45m mark, the majority of people took the entire time. I had to write super quickly in order to finish. My hand was sore throughout the day from writing so much. In either case, that's the last of them. I think I did fairly well, although some of the questions were rather ambigious.

Now is the time to regenerate and reflect. Task number one, catch up on precious sleep. Task two, finish client websites. Task three, get through pile of books I've been meaning to read for quite some time. Task four, paintball. Muahaha. Task five, catch up on video gaming.

Anyways, expect more consistent blogging from me now since the crazy exam period is over.