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Aug. 29th, 2010 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardI think I am actually going to have to make a chart of what I need to read on any given day in order to have it done by whatever day I need to have it done by. I'm getting better at (I think) spatial orientation, but way worse at being able to understand something just by -- words, I guess? I need a map. A very accurate map, that I can look at and know where things are, and I'm reasonably sure that at this point I'm going to have to get good, clear maps of Scandinavia, Greece, Italy, and the Mediterranean and put them up on my wall, because my books keep having names but not maps and I don't know where things are, and it's the most frustrating thing. And I keep getting confused because I took my tops out of my suitcase and put them away in one drawer -- my bottoms are still in my suitcase -- and now I can't find them because I'm used to them being right there.
*scowls* I feel like I'm getting worse at remembering the words for what I'm talking about, too, although I don't think it's worse than usual. It's the point where I just wave my hands and say, "The thing! That you use! And -- we have the top of it, here, I saw it, let me show you, but I need the bottom, but I can't remember what it's called or what it's used for because I've only used it for this one purpose which is not what it was designed for, do we have it!" and wave my hands kind of frantically. (It was a broiler pan, by the way; I remembered what it was called several hours later.) Which is irritating, to say the least.
I'm one of those people who needs everything to be in exactly the right spot whenever possible; what's frustrating for me is that, when it comes to reading things, a lot of the time I can remember where on the page something was and how far into the book it was ("somewhere a little right of the middle, halfway down the left page on the right hand column"), but not necessarily what it said. Which is irritating when I'm testing or something similar, because I'll go, "Okay. I remember reading about this. I cannot remember precisely what it said. It was on a page below the diagram between the paragraph on X and the paragraph on Y," but I can't remember what the actual fact I read was. Which is irritating. But, on the bright side, it makes finding quotes for papers easier than it might be otherwise, if I didn't go through and mark the things I wanted to use the first or second time through. (Actually, I think this was why I was bad at memorizing music -- my method was to play it through enough times that I could remember it via body language, which eventually worked, but I couldn't remember the actual sheet music.)
I suck at giving directions, by the way. I know how to find things if I've done it at least once, because I can remember how to get there and where it's supposed to be, but I'm really bad at explaining how I did so. It's one of the reasons I was really thrown by Brooks Library the first couple of days I was at CWU -- there were books, but they were in the wrong places, and I couldn't figure out the pattern, and what -- and I eventually did, and it was fine, though now I'm back at being overwhelmed by how large Tilton is by comparison. Like, the DA section in Brooks took up, like, two shelves. In Tilton it takes up an entire wall of the fourth floor. Finding the section I want is hell, because I couldn't remember the full call number sequence; I could remember it was DA something, but not what; at Brooks I didn't have to remember because I knew exactly where it was in relation to where I first disappeared into the stacks. But at Tilton it's in a different place. (I actually still haven't found them, but I don't have time for pleasure reading, are you crazy?)
However. I am pretty good at remembering numbers, which is unfortunate when I get one particular number series stuck in my head and I can't remember what it goes to. "Is that my ID number? Is that my social? Is that a license plate number? Is that my PIN?" (It was my OnePass number, by the way. There's another number series that I can't quite shake, which I gave up and used for my door code, but I don't know where it's from. Oh well.)
*scowls* I feel like I'm getting worse at remembering the words for what I'm talking about, too, although I don't think it's worse than usual. It's the point where I just wave my hands and say, "The thing! That you use! And -- we have the top of it, here, I saw it, let me show you, but I need the bottom, but I can't remember what it's called or what it's used for because I've only used it for this one purpose which is not what it was designed for, do we have it!" and wave my hands kind of frantically. (It was a broiler pan, by the way; I remembered what it was called several hours later.) Which is irritating, to say the least.
I'm one of those people who needs everything to be in exactly the right spot whenever possible; what's frustrating for me is that, when it comes to reading things, a lot of the time I can remember where on the page something was and how far into the book it was ("somewhere a little right of the middle, halfway down the left page on the right hand column"), but not necessarily what it said. Which is irritating when I'm testing or something similar, because I'll go, "Okay. I remember reading about this. I cannot remember precisely what it said. It was on a page below the diagram between the paragraph on X and the paragraph on Y," but I can't remember what the actual fact I read was. Which is irritating. But, on the bright side, it makes finding quotes for papers easier than it might be otherwise, if I didn't go through and mark the things I wanted to use the first or second time through. (Actually, I think this was why I was bad at memorizing music -- my method was to play it through enough times that I could remember it via body language, which eventually worked, but I couldn't remember the actual sheet music.)
I suck at giving directions, by the way. I know how to find things if I've done it at least once, because I can remember how to get there and where it's supposed to be, but I'm really bad at explaining how I did so. It's one of the reasons I was really thrown by Brooks Library the first couple of days I was at CWU -- there were books, but they were in the wrong places, and I couldn't figure out the pattern, and what -- and I eventually did, and it was fine, though now I'm back at being overwhelmed by how large Tilton is by comparison. Like, the DA section in Brooks took up, like, two shelves. In Tilton it takes up an entire wall of the fourth floor. Finding the section I want is hell, because I couldn't remember the full call number sequence; I could remember it was DA something, but not what; at Brooks I didn't have to remember because I knew exactly where it was in relation to where I first disappeared into the stacks. But at Tilton it's in a different place. (I actually still haven't found them, but I don't have time for pleasure reading, are you crazy?)
However. I am pretty good at remembering numbers, which is unfortunate when I get one particular number series stuck in my head and I can't remember what it goes to. "Is that my ID number? Is that my social? Is that a license plate number? Is that my PIN?" (It was my OnePass number, by the way. There's another number series that I can't quite shake, which I gave up and used for my door code, but I don't know where it's from. Oh well.)