Memory
I often say that I have a bad memory. It's a reasonable approximation, but it's not exactly true. I'm very good at certain types of recall, under certain circumstances, it's just that access is very complicated. I was always very good at school, and tested very well. If I put my mind in "studying" mindset (and I have the focus at the time to do so), I can fairly easily read a chapter once and then take any normal test on it and do well. I can memorize lines or definitions fairly easily, as long as I have the right cues to bring them up. Once I'm looking at my slides for teaching, I have all sorts of detailed facts about the material at my disposal. For day-to-day things, I basically have two different types of memory. One is the equivalent of a few ragged, handwritten notes that provide pointers that I'm left to puzzle over. The other is extremely detailed, and I think of it as the equivalent to a saved game. When I access this, I have all sorts of inf...