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The Power Of Review

by Terry Barlow
12/21/24
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Once as an 8th grader I was invited to be interviewed on stage at a school assembly because I had made the Distinguished Honor Roll after a straight A semester. The school administration wanted me to give the other students some "pointers" on how to succeed academically. The only problem was that I was at the age when I was more interested in "playing it cool" than I was in helping my classmates succeed in their studies, so the interview yielded precious little in the way of practical advice for achieving excellence in classwork. Today I suspect that one of the study techniques I had likely begun to master at that early age was the art of notetaking and the power of review. After an interesting lecture or presentation I would return later to any notes I had taken and underline or highlight salient points. I would find then that ideas would come clear and take useable form this way on a level and to a degree they had not initially. I was actually making the material my own as I practiced this discipline. As I came to express it later, I was "putting flesh on the bones." The understanding I had immediately after the lecture or presentation was merely the "skeleton" and it was not yet complete. To put it another way: I was now through review connecting the dots that had been given me in class. The teacher or professor does not and cannot connect the dots for us. That is our part as students to do. Revisiting the notes was the way to assimilate the new material and put flesh on the bones. (Otherwise I would end up wth many skeletons in my closet!) I knew if I didn't do that I was likely to forget most of what I had heard or read, or even wrote. I have found this to be true also as a Bible student. I journal what I am learning and what is being revealed to me. Then before I venture into fresh material the next day, I look back over the previous day's thoughts, many of which I have already begun to forget. In this way I am "capturing" what I am being taught, getting it under my belt before being exposed to a lot more. New learning is usually progressively added to the foundation or substructure of previous learning that has begun to be applied. This is not to say that a little preview of material to come isn't also helpful when possible, to give more context and a bigger picture or perspective of the ideological landscape which we are traveling as students. As it says in the Old Testament book of Isaiah in chapter 28 verse 10: "For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little there a little. "  This is a good description 👌 of how so much of our learning occurs.