My first year in college I took the “hard” chemistry for science majors and didn’t do so well, flunked actually. A few years later, after two years in the military as a navy corpsman I went back to school, and still wary of the “hard” chemistry, I took the “easy” chemistry for non majors. I did well but later when I finally decided on a major, Medical Technology, (which I never finished) I had to go back and take the dreaded quantitative analysis which had been left out of the “easy” chemistry. As it turned out it wasn’t too bad. I liked the professor. The course was basically chemistry problems using math. I had trouble with the abstract math but could usually handle  math if it was necessary for an actual problem. The Prof would go over each problem as many times as necessary, without making you feel like an idiot. After he had worked  problems out in class he put it up on his office door with the answers.

There was a test every two weeks and each test was taken from the problems he had worked out and posted. He changed the numbers on the tests but in every other way the problems were exactly the same. He also said that if you got an A on the final, which was made up of problems from the weekly tests, he would give you an A for the quarter, regardless of the weekly test scores. I did OK on the weekly tests but for the final I memorized all the problems, aced the final, and got an A for the quarter. And thought I was pretty smart.

A  couple weeks later I’m sitting in the cafeteria with a friend who asks, “didn’t you take chemistry 236?” I casually said, “Yes.” But because he knew my college track record, the next question was, “What grade did you get?” Feeling a little smug, I said, an “A”. That was good enough, so he asked if I could help him with the problems. “Sure, no problem.” Keeping in mind these were the exact problems I had done two weeks before…..I couldn’t do them. I like to think that I could have done them with a couple hours work…..but I’m not so sure. I certainly couldn’t show another person how to do them over a cup of coffee.

This was the beginning of a turning point in my college career asI began to wonder, “what was I doing in college if I couldn’t remember what I “learned” two weeks ago?