This week I learned that the bathrooms on flights are international.  When you enter you’re Russian, when inside European and when you leave you’re Finish. 

I was exposed to more important things this week but that seemed to stick in my memory.  And, so I wondered why.   I’ve heard it takes over 20 repetitions for something to be remembered or for something to become a habit.  While that is hardly scientific it does illustrate that it takes many times over for something to become ingrained in one’s memory.  So, why then am I able to remember a silly joke after one repetition but many other more important things I have to hear over and over again to internalize?

Often it is because we choose to recall some things we hear shortly after we hear them while others we just put in our reserve memory to tap at a later time.  As an example, in my sophomore year in college one of my jobs was to tutor students in accounting.  While that may not seem like a stretch today, as a sophomore in college there were other extracurricular activities that demanded my attention than being scholarly.  I learned more about accounting through my tutoring experience than I did in all the accounting classes during my undergraduate combined.  So, I am suggesting that we should do more instead of just studying more.  We learn much faster that way.