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Shakespeare, College & Metacognition

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It’s a treasure to be in Ashland Oregon visiting my son at college. It is rich with culture both young and aging. I was surprised on the first visit with the abundance of ‘boomers’ in town for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We stayed at the lovely and historic Ashland Springs Resort and the lobby is a wonderful place for people watching both in hotel and on the main drag through town. On both trips I saw mostly “Super Agers” at the hotel. It seems that the average theater-goer of OSF is definitely older. I was fortunate enough to have a few chats with some of them.  I was fascinated by their stories. Today I will share one (stay tuned for more–we’ve got four years of Ashland to research!)

A lovely, spry man in his early 80s shared with me all the different things he does to stay cognitively active from physics to farming to patent-lawyering to technology. He asked me what is the one thing, above all else I would recommend for improving memory. I unhesitatingly replied: “Do something different.” Why? He is clearly doing a lot of ‘heady’ stuff so shouldn’t that be enough? Not really. The neuroscience findings show that when you are doing something novel, different, new, maybe even something you just don’t have a natural proclivity for like dancing or singing or math, etc., you are creating a whole lot more activity in the brain and the synapses (sparks between neurons) are wildly activated which spawns growth called NEUROPLASTICITY.

Definition from Wikipedia…

“Neuroplasticity, …is the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual’s life…The aim of neuroplasticity is to optimize the neural networks during …learning…Research in the latter half of the 20th century showed that many aspects of the brain can be altered (or are “plastic”) even through adulthood.[2][3][4][5].

At the same time I was meeting all these incredible ‘Super-agers’ I was also at the college with young-just adult-brains who are learning the subjects of the world. My son told me “Mom you won’t believe this but I just learned about ‘Metacognition'” (he knows what line of work I’m in and hears the vocabulary passing by (didn’t know he was listening!) It was for the purpose of learning how to optimize study habits (my son is a freshman.)

You may remember metacognition is thinking about your own thoughts and how they affect your behavior or your plan of action including how you adjust for an optimum outcome. Some of the curriculum included being aware of what you don’t know, of the information that’s not on the page and when you have to infer. Metacognition helps to plan your studies so you don’t increase anxiety–it helps with forethought and prediction so you don’t bottle neck your studies the night before the exam.

EXERCISE OF THE DAY

Alas, I invite you to pick something new to start, perhaps after Thanksgiving? Something different, maybe even difficult for you (but not too difficult). Ideally it might be about memory exercises (since we are all about growing memory neuroplasticity) but it could be anything. Make a commitment to practice and use your metacognition to check your positive, or negative emotions and adjust them so you are giving yourself a pat on the back for trying something new and growing your neuroplasticity!!! This is sure to help your memory and keep you vibrant!!!

Great book recommendation: THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF by Norman Doidge.

Remember me until next time,

jenn bulka, Memory Therapist, SLP CCC-SP CA State License #14,006

http://www.My Memory Pal.com

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