Exam Guide 2: The Walkman Technique

3rd Jun 2003

Studying Tips with Danny Elbow
PRC Current Affairs & Education Correspondent

Methods of study particularly for high pressure exams such as Leaving cert. and college finals will vary from student to student. Each one tailoring a personal study system to maximise his or her educational intake. Some like to study in groups to maintain discipline others prefer to stay aloof studying at home in their bedrooms near their CD collections and stash of magazines they wouldn't want their old ladies to know about.

All students need to maintain a healthy diet of course balanced with regular exercise to ensure their minds stay fresh and focussed on pouring over and retaining vast quantities of information. Wouldn't it be nice if a less intense and laborious method of intake existed? Help is at hand as PeoplesRepublicOfCork.com uncovers one of Cork's most closely guarded secrets: a study method passed down the generations by a small group of students from a famous school in Cork City.

This technique was first developed and tested by leaving cert. students at the North Mon. Secondary School in Blackpool. Modern memory techniques cannot compare with the tried and tested Walkman Method. You'll need a tape recorder with an on board microphone, walkman with comfortable headphones and a bed. First decide on what you want to memorise. Don't necessarily pick something difficult like maths formulae (you can always write those on the back of your eyelids before the exam). Choose something like an Irish essay or a lengthy answer to some gammy Yeat's poem that's meant to come up. Read it out for the tape several times in a row until you have used up one side of a 90 minute audio tape. Repetition is the key.

Slot the audio tape in the walkman, place the headphones on your noggin and hit the sack. Yes! You can head off to the land of nod and still reap the benefits. As you dream the tape will automatically transfer the information from the audio tape into your brain at a rate of around 1KB per hour. This amount of information transfer was far higher than any North Mon student had experienced previously and the school scored tops that year in all subjects including home economics which wasn't even taught at the Mon.

The following year two students entered the idea to the Young Scientist of the Year competition but were sadly eliminated when judges arrived at their stand to find the two students lying in a heap on the floor. While the students claim they were using the Sleep 'n' Study method at the time, officials claim that only a distinct reggae beat could be heard from the headphones and that traces of rizla rolling papers were found at the scene. Nobody told them that in Cork, we call that education too.

Some graduates from that year are now in their thirties and hope to open a new virtual learning technology company which will sell products allowing students to do homework as well as download and play mobile phone games in their brains while they sleep. Surely engineering such technology must be extremely costly….

"We are moving towards a sub-conscious educational system" said the company's director Se·nie O'Callaghan originally from Redemption Road, "we hope to generate revenue for the project by selling advertising to brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald's who will advertise inside the young students brains while they sleep". A novel idea indeed and here's hoping we can use this study technique finally prove that Corkonians are the most educated people in the world with lightning computational skills and an excellent grasp of English grammar. Don't be tellin' no wan now like!