Saturday, April 24, 2010

BloggeRhythms 4/25/2010

Since the last few entries have jogged my memories of college, I'm going to add one more. Because I have a relatively new friend whom I've told the following, and he seems to like the story.

I wound up sitting next to some guy I didn't know, in the student lounge one afternoon before classes began, and got into a conversation. He told me his name was Karl. Though a bit aloofish at first, he turned out to be friendly in a formal way, quite a nice person and extraordinarily bright. In time, we wound up in several of the same classes and began to study together for exams.

Now, studying was very important to both of us but in quite different ways. On Karl's part it seemed he was driven to achieve high grades, keep his place on Dean's List and squeeze out every ounce of knowledge available from every course. And beyond that, though I never asked, I assumed he was paying for the education himself and wanted his money's worth.

I, on the other hand, was an academic scholarship student and needed to maintain my B+ average or the scholarship grantor's would cease paying my freight. I certainly had no plan to cough up the bucks myself, thus high grades were as important to me as Karl's were to him, except he was far more sincere about them. Because I had no interest in the education, I just wanted my name inscribed on a diploma and to get the hell out as fast as I was able.

Regardless of our individual views of the education's worth, however, it was obviously critical in both our cases to achieve the highest grades we possibly could. To help in that regard we formed a study group of two (me and Karl) and bore down before exams to really scour our books, supporting data and notes.

And, it was in one of these cramming sessions that Karl made a horrendous mistake. During a break or lull or whatever in our endeavors, he told me that according to some article he'd recently read, excerpted from some medical magazine or other -the human brain had a finite capacity for the storage of information. Therefore, when any new item was added to your store of knowledge, some other piece of information of similar size was immediately knocked out.

"So, let me get this straight," I asked, "If you tell me something new right now, something else I've been carrying around in my head for however long is going to be pushed out?" Karl replied, "You got it! That's exactly how it works."

"Hold on a minute here, Karl," I said, "That can't possibly be true. I'm sure the brain's storage capacity is huge, perhaps infinite in fact. Scientists have been saying for years that humans don't even come close to fully utilizing their mental resources."

"That may be what you think," he replied, "But, I believe what I read."

And, that's when he'd made his fatal error. Because he went on to say, "Okay, so let's be quiet now, it's time to study and I need to memorize this information."

Upon hearing Karl's request for silence, and now knowing his concern about information-swapping tendencies caused by input overloads to brains, I began to sing the words of some popular song or other. Karl began to fidget and twitch and turn pages back, so he could study them again. That's when I asked him if he'd seen last nights basketball game. Without waiting for him to answer, I went on to tell him the score, and then list the Knick's next six opponents. In not too long a time beyond that, I touched upon quite a few trivial subjects, each chock full of statistics and data.

I don't remember the specific outcome of the test we were about to take, but I'm sure we came through with flying colors as far as grades were concerned, because we always did. Yet, I do remember my study partner that evening clearly, because I got a chance to see a dignified, mannerly, soft-spoken intellect of the highest power turn into a blithering, blubbering, barbarian then lose it altogether in a blinding, babbling rage.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

No comments:

Post a Comment