i noticed that after the holidays my math plummeted and teachers told me its because of the break i took… why does this happen and how can i regain those skills acquired prior to the break
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Practice in your down time. You have all of the knowledge stored away, but because you had not done it in so long, your brain forgot the order in which certain things had to happen for the skill.
For example, I’m 24, havent done any real algebra since my junior year of High School, about 7 years ago. I was helping my fiance who was working on some low level algebra for college, and everything just looked like a mess. So I googled it, looked at an example or two, found a practice problem or 2, and it all came back to me. For that specific type of problem, anyways.
It takes practice to develop any skill, and the more practice you dedicate to the skill, the more you will be able to do it. Like muscle memory when writing or walking or cooking, the more you use the knowledge, they better you will end up at it
this isnt ELI5 but i took a course on coursera… “Learning how to learn” that went deep into this. it was really helpful with learning Software Engineering. It taught me how to learn more efficiently and actually retain information. Spaced repetition is a big one.
The act of consistently practicing a skill if even for a few minutes daily is more efficient than cramming.
So those neural connections are still there and it’ll take you much less work compared to another brain who hasn’t had the same practice.
Here is a long example. I grew up speaking Mandarin and I took ESL (back when it was still called ESL) throughout elementary school. As I aged, I spoke better and better English as I had more and more ability to describe the world with English but not with Mandarin. And basically around highschool my spoken Mandarin (since spoken and written AND reading skills are all separate) got so bad that when I first met my Mandarin speaking wife I actually needed my dad to help me translate.
Well, in between getting to know her and taking Chinese in college for two years, and now married for over ten years a lot of native speakers of Mandarin can’t tell I’m not a native speaker until they have a conversation with me. I definitely had a way easier time learning Chinese in school and relearning spoken Chinese since I had known some of that stuff before. Hope this helps!
So, if the brain dumps what it thinks we don’t need, could ‘repressed memories’ be false? Or are the memories buried deep and able to be brought forth unchanged?
Tbh I’m more interested in why we _don’t_ forget certain skills and _do_ forget others. What’s the dividing line between long term retention and your brain just tossing something away?
You would have to use it for years upon years in order to retain it long-term/permanently. A few semesters of math yeah you will probably forget it after a small break.
For example I haven’t programmed in over 2 years since I’m taking a small break from work. I had a career as a programmer for 25 years. I can pick it up tomorrow like nothing ever happened. Kind of like riding a bike or driving a car. You can refrain from doing those for a long time and you will pick them up like nothing ever happened
If you want to regain your math skills just read through your textbook. It’ll come back to you faster than you know it. I haven’t had calculus in almost 20 years, and I picked up my textbook a few months ago and it all slowly came back to me
Brain pathways are like roads and funding to build roads.
Only the roads that get used get funding and resources.
The rest just start to deteriorate as time passes.
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