Desired increases in brainpower

[pasithea]

Lots of people seem to think I'm smart but I don't really feel that I am. I have lots of little pieces of stuff and I'm good at patterns and extrapolating ideas and have solid intuitive stuff and pick up skills quickly but I'm interested in so many things that my knowledge isn't very deep in anything.

It's often awkward for me, sitting with other engineers, listening to them talk about papers and mathematical theorems that they just assume I've read or know about.

Highschool left me woefully unprepared for anything. Not just in the specifics but in general learning and study habits. What I'd really to read right now are some good books on studying quickly with a high rate of retention. Of course, there's so many books on that subject that it's not easy to chose one at random and it be likely to be a decent one. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Comments

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I dunno about studying quickly per se, but there are some useful tricks for getting the most out of academic papers without having to spend much time reading them.

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Doesn't De Anza have a How To Study class?
You were just wondering what to do with Summer Session...

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Do not resort to reading wikipedia recreationally. It's eating me from inside.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

I know this won't be well received, but I'm reminded of advice in Hillegass's book (Cocoa Programming for MacOS X; it's the book every cocoa programmer I've met swears by).

They also do a week-long training course, and in the book they advise the best way to retain knowledge long-term is to sleep. Like, full-night's rest. And that caffeine is not a substitute. The brain actually uses that time to defrag and reorganize, to figure things out and recompress data. And, optionally, to figure out benzene rings.