You may not have heard of “spaced repetition learning,” but quite likely you’ve been the unwitting victim of it. It’s the educational equivalent of being force-fed the same soggy cereal every morning until you can recite the ingredients list in your sleep. For those unfamiliar with how this insidious method is structured, I’ll break it down for you. It’s that lovely process wherein teachers reintroduce the same information at increasingly distant intervals, as if they’re determined to hammer it into your skull until the echoes haunt your dreams.
The pattern goes a little something like this:
1. First Repetition: Within a day, just as you’ve managed to push the lesson out of your immediate consciousness.
2. Second Repetition: After a few days, because why let you move on when you can revisit the same dull topic?
3. Third Repetition: A week later, by which time you’ve either repressed the memory or prayed for amnesia.
4. Fourth Repetition: After a month, just when you’ve started to think you might be safe.
5. Fifth Repetition: A few months later, because why not traumatize you with a pop quiz?
Most people seem to benefit from this method — or so I’m told by those blissfully unaware of its darker implications. They claim it cements knowledge into long-term memory, like a well-meaning carpenter nailing down a loose floorboard. But for me, the process feels more like being repeatedly bludgeoned with the same blunt object. It’s a pedagogical torture device disguised as a learning tool.
My brain, bless its quirky little neurons, has always been an overactive sponge. It soaks up information like a toddler on a sugar high. The trouble is, instead of just absorbing the good stuff, it also clings stubbornly to every useless trivia and random embarrassment that comes its way. The result is that I’m a walking encyclopedia of everything I’ve ever been taught, read, overheard, or wished I could forget.
Herein lies the true horror of spaced repetition: it’s not just a tool for learning. No, it’s a weapon for entrenching. Every time I’m forced to revisit a topic, it’s as though my brain decides, “Oh, we’re thinking about this again? Let’s make sure it sticks forever.” The very things I’d prefer to erase from my mental hard drive become permanent fixtures, like those annoying default apps you can’t delete from your smartphone.
In a cruel twist of irony, the more I dwell on these unwelcome memories—trying to will them into oblivion—the more they cement themselves in my consciousness. Spaced repetition, it seems, is as effective at preserving unwanted thoughts as it is at reinforcing useful knowledge. It’s the psychological equivalent of finding that your trash bin is superglued to your desk. Every attempt to toss out the garbage just ends up spreading the mess further.
So, the next time someone extols the virtues of spaced repetition learning, I’ll be sure to smile and nod, all the while knowing that, for some of us, it’s less about learning and more about living in a perpetual cycle of déjà vu—where every forgotten fact and embarrassing moment is bound to come back to haunt us, like a rerun of a horrible show on an endless loop that we’re forced to watch in order to graduate.
~ Amelia Desertsong
