How do I memorize all of this stuff?

I don’t have the greatest memory. Understanding this little fact I have to study differently for tests than most do. My husband can read something over and over and then commit it for memory. I could do that if I also wrote it 10 times with different color, committed it to song and created some visual.

After studying 1 hour every day for the last month I had increased that to 4-6 hours this week. I had spent hours on wikipidea. Every time I would take a CLEP test, 6-7 total I would look up everything I missed on wiki. I loved that. I learned so much.

I had over 20 pages of notes including pictures that I printed out of architecture and art.
The day of the test I had to commit those to memory. This is how I did it.

Here is a portion of my list of titles of poems and books

Tyger tyger
The Waste Land
Pride and Prejudice
Ulysses
Pygmalion
Doll house
Piers Plowan
Road less traveled
Uncle Ramus
Sleepy hollow
Skylark
Then I made up stories and pictures in my head to go with each of them. Remember that this is just multiple choice so I only have to get close to the name on the list of 5)

Tyger tyger ( don’t bake the tiger) William Blake
The Waste Land ( don’t waste the tea) TS Elliot
Pride and Prejudice ( I have great pride in our capitol Austin) Jane Austen
Ulysses ( molly bloom loves jj) James Joyce
Pygmalion ( shaw is a pig and he loves to sculpt) Bernard Shaw
Doll house ( itty biddy things go in a doll house) Henrick Ibsen
Piers Plowan ( plow the land to find god) William Langland
Road less traveled ( there is frost on that road and in Kennedy’s pocket) Robert frost also wrote a dedication for the Kennedy inauguration.
Uncle Ramus ( the hare on the rabbit is brown) Joel Chandler Harris also wrote Briar Rabbit.
Sleepy hollow ( I had to picture George Washington on the horse with his head detached)
Skylark (don’t pierce the bird in the side with a shell) Pierce Shelley


And for the list of groups if I could find one person in the list I felt I was o.k.
Knickerbockers- (the guy wore Copper knickerbockers that clanked) Cooper
Beat writers (those beat writers drink a lot of gin) Allen Ginsberg
Lost generation ( Ezra pounded pizza and they had a fit) Fitzgerald and Ezra Pounds
Fireside ( there are a lot of fellows around the fire) Longfellow
Local color ( Mark twain)


Well that is my fun time of memorization. Once these mind pictures were made I could remember things so much easier. If you have difficulty, you might try it as well.