Lest I Forget

   The problem with having a good memory at a young age is that it can make you lazy and undisciplined, which can result in limitations on what you actually know and can do.

   Being a voracious reader just for the sake of reading doesn't help, either.

   What I am trying to say is, when you can read something and remember 70 to 80 percent of what you read, more than enough to be able to test well on the subject, it can create the delusion in yourself and those around you (schoolmates, teachers) that you are smart and know stuff, when actually you are simply a voracious reader with a good memory.

   It can be insidious. You go through school getting good enough grades to pass (or even excel in) your classes, but you don't really learn anything, you just remember stuff, the basics of how something works or the history of something, but you do not actually learn the reasons why something works, or what makes something works, or even the most rudimentary reasons for something being what it is in the first place.

   Let me give an example. When I was 7 years old I learned that plants use photosynthesis to turn light and carbon into energy, and that chlorophyll was what allowed plants to do that - and that chlorophyll was mostly green, so plants were mostly green. I had read about the photosynthesis process in one of my older sister's school textbooks.

   I wrote I 'learned" a few things about the process of photosynthesis when I was 7 years old, but what I actually had done was read a book and retained a little information. I had no actual idea how photosynthesis worked or how it developed or anything about the mechanical, chemical, or physical processes involved, I just knew the names of a few of the steps and what the very basic function of those steps were.

   But what I had retained was enough to make adults around me think I was bright, and enough to make friends and classmates to think I was nerdy.