When the Mind Betrays

The cycle of life is indeed funny when you think about it. We start out as children who know nothing of what we are. We are infants who need to be guided, bathed, changed and taught or supported in walking. As we grow old we tend to exhibit all the attributes of infancy on our last days on earth.

I think being forgetful is a normal part of life because of how our brains tends to function. For me, I think our brain tends to filter in and filter out information based on how we perceive it when we receive it. Let’s look at it this way, think about the time you met someone new, all the excitement especially if you have romantic feelings towards that person. You tend to pay attention to everything that he or she is saying. You don’t miss a name, an address and a phone number no matter how hard it is.

This happens cause your brain tends to realise that the information that you are receiving is important so it’s important to keep in mind. For me, I believe in knowing the names of people especially if you are working with them. I keep this as an attribute cause where I was doing my service I had to ask people to do things most of the time and I thought it was pretty lame not to know their names and just call them something else.

So for me it’s a priority even though I tend to be very good at mixing up names. I do that but I still deem it important to know the names of the people you work with. It might not be that important to some but I think it’s way out of respect to them and what they do at the work place.

If I’ve ever forgotten something that had a huge impact on me I’d say forgetting what I learnt before I went into the exam hall. I don’t know if this story will make the cut but I’ll still go ahead and talk about it anyway.

So most people who know me, know that I like maths a lot. In JHS I used to study maths all the time so it became something that I liked a lot. When I went into senior high school my grades weren’t that good all the time but I always made sure my maths was up there. So we had to write novdec in form two. Knowing that I like maths I spent about 3 months before the exams solving maths problems each day before I opened any other book.

On the day of the exams, out of nowhere it seemed I lost my memory. I don’t know if I’d attribute it to stress or over confidence but my head was empty when they gave me the paper. There a lot of things that I had always gone through but it didn’t look like I could solve any of those questions.

I was so hurt but then I also knew there was no way I was going to pass that paper in particular. The results came out and I failed; I had an F in maths. For me, it taught me a good lesson and made me even prepare more for my wassce. In wassce it was quite different as I realise taking that novdec brought me a lot of confidence for wassce.

For me, I prepare a lot to not let those things happen to me again. I think that’s my computer measure to forgetfulness. What is yours? And how do you cope?