A final year student of Estate Management: Lucky Otutu Absalom. I wish to tell you Certain secrets most Brilliant students never share. 

HOW TO HACK YOUR SHORT TERM MEMORY AND CRAM PROPERLY WHEN NECESSARY. 

I hear a lot of students brag ignorantly with words like "I don't know how to cram but the lecturer likes cramming, i read to understand." hmmmm such is a nice statement but truly hypocritical. Lemme ask: 
1."How did you learn your alphabets? Do you understand why letter B is after letter A? Do you understand why its not after letter C?" 
2. "How did you learn your numbers? Do u 'understand' why number -1 is before number 0?" can you explain? No you can't. Why? It was crammed(memorized). 

Every human has been blessed with the ability to cram but not everyone harnesses this ability well. I will teach you how to be a perfect crammer(hack your short term memory). Just follow mi:

Cramming/Understanding are two basic media to feed your memory but the difference is CRAMMING is short term While UNDERSTANDING is Long term. 
Most students get it all wrong with the ratio at which they use the two media(cramming & understanding). They tend to use it at an unbalanced ration. 
Please Note: DON'T CRAM MORE THAN YOU UNDERSTAND & ONLY CRAM WHEN NECESSARY(I strongly advise u understand something than cram it but sometimes its necessary). 

In an academic system like ours where most of our lecturers teaches us with the notes they used in their days, And they boldly tell us that they want you to use THEIR WORDS wen answering questions; the has led to mass failure on the side of students. 

Like i have said before "cramming is used to store into our short term memory" thus you tend to forget it after awhile But you can hack your short memory to help you retain information for years. 

Do you know that we learnt our English alphabets by Cramming? But not even the "least brillant" student can forget his Alphabets. Why? Because he has hacked that info stored in his short term memory(not every one know this). He crammed it at his childhood, He learnt words Startin with each Alphabets, He speak English. Every time you cram don't just recite but 'play' with the info you are cramming. Use it as reminders in your phones, Use it as songs, record yourself with your phones and listen to it,Use some words when gisting, make it a part of your language. Constant repetition in the room, lecture hall, helps to shift the info to a long term memory. 
Have you noticed that An average higher tertiary institution student cannot recite 'STATE AND CAPITAL'? Why? There was no continuous repetition after primary. To retain lomg you must continously refresh your memory.