Study games that help you remember

[Part 6]

When you play around with something, you become fully engaged in it. When you become fully engaged in it, you learn it without feeling you are using too much brain power. This makes the learning process easy and less stressful.

	Another good way of memorizing concepts you will need to know to sit your certification exam, is to apply study games to those concepts. One way of doing this is using mnemonics. Mnemonics is a concept where we associate an easy-to-remember phrase, in order for it to trigger your memory to recall something more complex.

For example, in your Network+ certification, you will need to remember the OSI. The OSI model has 7 layers. Here they are...

Application
Presentation
Session
Transport
Network
Data Link
Physical

A way to remember the OSI 7 layers: All People Seem To Need Data Processing

The OSI 7 layers in ascending order: People Don't Need This Stupid Protocol Anyway

When you associate these two easy-to-remember phrases, you can remember the order of the OSI model from ascending to descending order. Also the first letter of each phrase will trigger your memory to remember each of the OSI model layers.

Another of those study games you can play with difficult concepts is to use the Story memory technique. What you do in this game is to create a story of your own which associates familiar things. You can make it funny, you can exaggerate it. Actually, when you exaggerate it, it will become more memorable.

Example...

“On Friday I submitted my application to join the Starship Enterprise. It was accepted, of course, and when I arrived on the Enterprise I was ushered into Ten Forward where there was this huge presentation to welcome me. The session lasted over an hour and there was a lot of applause. I was transported to the bridge where I met my hero, Data, in which we networked and created a data link of our ideas. We then physically brought those ideas into effect and started exploring parts of the universe previously uncharted.”

See what I mean? How can you forget a story that is so silly? You won't. You will recall your silly story and laugh as you read a question in the exam and know you can answer it!