#5: Meet Puff the Magic Sponge!

Agnes has been a bit MIA because we’ve been in study mode for uni….

Which means I have 2 exciting bits of information as it relates to my brain’s progress:

1) I passed 2 of my 4 exams.  Hip-hip-hooray!!! I won’t elaborate on the score… Suffice it to say pre-stroke Hailey would have been disappointed in the number, but Agnes could not care less as long as she doesn’t have to take it again! A pass is a pass!

2) I’ve been playing daily brain games on Lumosity.com since Aug 1st last year. When I started, I was only in the 17^th percentile within my age bracket. Now a year later, I have just passed the 75^th percentile.  That’s nearly a 60% increase! Another hip-hip-hooray! (What’s that I hear? Clapping and cheering?? Awwww…) **It should be noted that if I change the age bracket to +75 for Agnes, it’s in the 99^th percentile. Agnes is one smart cookie!

How did I do it, you may ask?? Lots and lots of routine, that’s for sure.  (More on my routines in another blog.) For the first exam, everyone was allowed to bring in university-approved 2-page cheat sheets. This helped immensely, especially since I was able to enlarge the font to 20+, so the 2 pages thus became well over 10.

For the second one, I was a bit nervous that I would be relying on my memory alone. I didn’t know if I could trust it. So a random, albeit hokey, idea came to me one day when I was doing my morning meditation… Grab a kitchen sponge, keep it on my lap and/or near me all the time I’m studying. It’s basically a visualization tool that’s representative of my brain. It’s there with me witnessing my studying, literally metaphorically soaking up all the information, with the intention of bringing it into the exam. The plan was that if I felt stumped at any point during the test, I would squeeze it and wallah, the answer would magically come to me. Luckily, I studied so much for that second exam that I didn’t really even need it. But I like to think that it helped!

So, meet Puff, my Magic Sponge. 🙂

I drew a little smiley face on it because Glenn nearly did the dishes with it thinking it was nothing special and I about had a panic attack….  ‘No! Not my magic sponge!!!’ as I proceeded to have a near child-like meltdown. Speaking of, I’d like to take a quick moment to reminiscence on the 1978 children’s cartoon Puff the Magic Dragon. Apologies in advance for the tune that’s about to go on repeat in your head. (Now you can get an idea of what I’m constantly hearing when I study!)

My next exam is in exactly two weeks, and the other one will be the next week after, so it’s now crunch time! Puff and Agnes will be off having many hours of pow-wow’s together. After that, I only have the dissertation and then I’m DONE with my MSc!  The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter…