Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

We seem to be overconfident in our own learning, or at least have too much confidence in blocked or massed practice. I wonder if we use massed or blocked practice because of conditioning. Just like gambling, we have had some success with massed or blocked practice, as in classical conditioning evening if there is no reward with the ringing of the bell or the pull of the slot machine handle, we have had some success with passing an exam due to cramming for it the night before. We internalize that is how we are successful, through massed or blocked practice. One advantage of being a non-traditional learner is that over time I have learned that cramming does not work for me. During my master’s experience, I took some classes that were out of my comfort zone, accounting, statistics, financial analysis. These were by far more challenging than anything I had in my undergraduate degree, and even though I did not know then about interleaving or spaced retrieval, I would ‘practice’ studying, meaning I would repeatedly practice over a span of a few weeks rather than wait to the last minute like I did most of the time in my undergraduate degree. I was more successful with grades in graduate school and use what I learned in accounting and financial analysis almost daily. In a current statistics class, re-learning the material is more about recognition (and retrieval) than learning new information. Just for fun, while watching Finding Nemo with our family a week ago, I wondered if spaced retrieval and interleaving would have worked for Dory!