I thought this was a weekly blog.

Umm... hey, what's that over there!?

(Slips into the night)

(Slips back)

So what exactly have I been doing that's so darned important I can't write a hyperbolic diatribe on some bombastically esoteric subject matter?

Yes, you guessed it: studying vocabulary for the GRE.

I have just shy of 5000 words to learn before January 11th, the day of my test. Luckily, I already know a great number of them; so those go by quickly. Many of the others, however, are quite abstruse and require repeated review.

Thankfully, I've discovered the magic of Spaced Repetition in the guise of the flashcard program Mnemosyne. The basic idea of this memory technique is that your brain uses memory most efficiently when it tries to remember something just before it's about to forget it.

This idea might seem paradoxical: how can one know when one is about to forget something while not remembering it until that point? That's where the computer programs come in. It can track what you've learned and how well you've learned it and wait a suitable amount of time before asking you again. Hence, you can learn more and learn it more quickly.

So ideally, I should be able to cram those words into my head along with every formula, question type, prime number, et cetera that I'll need for the test in the next 3 weeks. Of course I started the vocabulary two weeks ago; so I should have gone through each word at least once before the end of December by averaging 200 a day. Hopefully my brain won't explode.

JetSetArnett Out.

I think I can.