Ask HN: How do you keep from forgetting College coursework?

Trapper Keeper

Practice. That’s the only way.

I come from a school where courses are few but practices are many, you have to be active in your learning to keep youself from forgetting. With practice your courses become mechanical applications and can't be forgotten, just like riding a bike.

I'm soon finishing college and was just thinking about this. There are a couple of things that I want to try:

1. Re-summarize all (or at least the hard parts) of my notes,

2. Anki,

3. Work on a project that combines concepts from different courses.

For me is google code jam and ACM practice mode

Same as with anything else.

Spaced repetition.

That said, I'd be pretty picky about deciding what to keep "conscious". Recalling every detail is almost always pointless. Once you've been exposed to something in any detail recollection and reuse is easier.

10 years on, it has been use it or lose it for me.

I've lost so much...

You greatly overvalue the specifics of your CS courses. The concepts, at a high level of abstraction, should be identifiable to you from memory. The details are recovered by using some ancient technology known as a book.