The Art of Forgetting

Quietly sitting in my usual seat, I wait as Mrs. Valentino starts to slowly pass out the vocabulary quizzes to everyone. Of course, with my luck, I get the quiz the very last. Nervous, I look down to take a peep at my vocabulary quiz and one big. ugly word flashes through my mind: "Shit." How did these sentences relate in any way to the definitions that I had studied? Did I study the wrong terms? Did I study the wrong set of vocab words? Did I just.... happen to forget?

The scenario I just described is very realistic to many people that had to take any form of a memorization based quiz (not me of course since i'm the ultra mega handsome cool super buff Jayden Paik). You study your butt off the night before, only getting a couple of hours of sleep, but then you walk into the test your teacher hands out and all you see is what can be considered equivalent to a caveman looking at calculus for the first time. No matter how hard you study, you always somehow forget the one topic the teacher asks a bajillion questions about. 

This week in AP Language, we had a vocabulary quiz - and every week before that too. On top of having a vocabulary quiz every week, studying for the quizzes are NOT easy. I never feel completely satisifed when I finish studying since there is a minute chance that Mrs. Valentino assigns us with a definition of a word that nobody has ever heard of before. For example, when I was studying for vocab quiz 3, I realized that all the words had multiple definitions that didn't even seem to relate in any way. The words also ALL started with the letter 'a' so memorizing them would be excruciatingly difficult. But for some damn reason, I decided to just research the 'correct sounding' definitions of each word, called it a day, and went to sleep feeling very confident that I was gonna do good. I in fact did not do good. During the quiz, my brain decided that suddenly remembering the lyrics to a tiktok audio was somehow more important than remembering what allegory meant. 

But then again, maybe that's just the art of forgetting. Maybe it's not that we don't care, it's that our brain is too busy trying to balance out the workload of each class to survive the chaos of high school. Between trying to remember what homework you have due, or what side of the hallway to walk on, remembering every bajillion definitions of 10 vocabulary words that start with "A" might just not make the cut. Maybe forgetting isn't always a bad thing. It can be a reminder that studying isn't about cramming information in our heads just to poop it back out - it's about actually understanding what we're learning and putting it into use. Or maybe studying is really gambling in disguise. Your roll the dice and pray that your brain is able to retain the right words for just 50 more minutes.

So yeah, maybe I did forget half of the vocabulary words for quiz #3. But hey, at least I didn't forget that I'm still the ultra mega handsome cool super buff Jayden Paik.

Comments

  1. Daniel ChoNovember 2, 2025 at 3:05 PM

    Nice blog! I liked how you related something so prevalent across lang students. It felt like you wanted to teach a wider audience just like how Sweat does. I also found some parts in the blog that was very comical such as the caveman looking at calculus the first time. However, I’d like it if you kept some things real like the part about the handsome and buff thing. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LANGonardo Da VinciNovember 4, 2025 at 6:13 PM

      I appreciate your compliments but I do want to say that I believe that I kept my blog quite realistic, even the handsome and buff thing.

      Delete

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