Memory skills benefits student, 19, beyond the classroom
S'pore Polytechnic student is one of the founders of club that helps others learn memory techniques
Memorising anything may be a challenge for many people, but it has become second nature for 19-year-old Chee Sin Hwee.
The third-year Diploma in Engineering with Business student is one of the founders of the Singapore Polytechnic (SP) Memory Sports Club, which was started last year.
Last weekend, Miss Chee and fellow members worked with the Singapore Memory Sports Association to organise the Asia Memory Championship 2018, where she was part of the organising committee.
The annual event is in its fourth year and saw 150 participants from across Asia taking part in various tests that aimed to stretch their memory skills.
The rounds included memorising sequences of numbers and random images, within a given time limit.
The event was particularly meaningful for Miss Chee, whose first encounter with memory techniques was in September last year, when she attended a basic memory skills workshop conducted by Mr Wellon Chou, founder and principal trainer of Memory Ark.
Before that, she was often forgetful and had struggled to memorise all the notes for her studies.
Miss Chee told The New Paper: "There were just too many things to memorise and every time I studied, I just couldn't recall what I had studied previously so I tried using memory techniques."
So over the past year, she attended four training workshops to pick up various skills and techniques to improve her memory.
According to Miss Chee, there are three main memory techniques - linking, hooking and memory palace.
After learning these techniques, Miss Chee started applying them to her daily life.
For example, she can memorise her grocery shopping list without having to pen it down.
She can also recall notes and concepts for exams easily.
In her last school semester, she achieved a perfect grade point average (GPA) of 4.0 for all her modules and scored 95 marks for one of the test papers, the highest in her cohort.
Previously, she could only score a maximum GPA of 3.7 for each semester.
However, improving one's memory is not as easy as it sounds, and it is vital to practise every day for at least an hour or two, said Miss Chee.
She said: "It requires a lot of determination and hard work."
Since November last year, Miss Chee and the SP Memory Sports Club have been reaching out to the underprivileged and elderly by conducting memory skills workshops as community service.
Students who cannot afford extra enrichment or tuition classes are welcome to attend workshops at SP to improve their memory to help them in their studies.
For the elderly, memory skills can help tackle early onset dementia.
The club has also gone to the SilverACE Senior Activity Centre to conduct a workshop.
Miss Chee believes that by spreading memory techniques, she will be able to change the lives of others.
She said: "We are too reliant on our mobile devices nowadays that we are not using much brain power."
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now