I did that for my entire time in school.
I used to think I was just very smart. Now I know that it was mostly attention deficit and a near perfect memory. A memory that I had trained by with this beat up self-help meditation book that I found. It taught a real method of meditation, but also promised magic mind powers. I found it when I was like 7, so I practiced the fuck out of those basic techniques.
These days, I train my memory by reading 20-30 different webnovels that update anywhere between daily and once every 2-3 months. Still haven’t gotten a real handle on that attention deficit though…
0ops@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Lol I’ve had to essentially derive formulas that I should have memorized mid test before. Or reverse engineer examples from other questions to figure out the concept needed for another question (again, should have known that going in). I used to take absurdly long tests due to stunts like these, but tbh it usually worked. I distinctly remember discovering how logarithms worked mid-test at some point, for example
Aganim@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Reminds me of highschool math. At some point you needed a graphical calculator, you could load programs into them but that required hooking them up to a computer with a crazy expensive data cable. So I found a schematic, ordered the components for a fraction of that price and learned to solder. It looked ugly AF, but it worked. Next step I wrote a program containing the formula’s I needed, uploaded it and installed a program which hid your program menu until you pressed a certain key combination. It could even simulate a hard reset, as you could get spot-checked and asked to do just that.
I could also have memorised the formula’s, but that wouldn’t have been fun. And unlike all those formula’s I still use my soldering and programming skills. 😋
0ops@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Respect dude. Those cables are stupidly expensive (to match the calculators I guess), I just bit the bullet on mine
Aganim@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, it did help that they used a simple serial connection back then and didn’t require any advanced electronics. Just a bunch of resistors and basic stuff like that. All relatively large components that are easy to solder with what I had back then. I’m not sure how easy it would be these days with USB.
CocoaBird@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
In a way I think being able to derive a formula is a much more valuable skill than rote memorisation, especially in higher education. That being said I’ve also done this when I was just lazy and didn’t remember my lessons…
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah hell my statics lecturer encouraged it
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Exactly. Tho i only had 45 minutes usually cause thats how long my classes in primary were.