<p>I'm a second semester junior here and had a question. I have loved almost every class that I have been in and being in mechanical engineering has been an awesome adventure so far. I get average to above average grades in my classes. These grades are at the cost of many nights with little sleep and an impact on my social life. </p>
<p>I feel like there are many times where I literally cannot remember material from some of my older classes (one semester ago and further). I will be thinking about something engineering related and i'll know that i've learned about whatever I am thinking about, but cannot seem to remember the details. I feel like I have a vague understanding of all my past classes, but cannot seem to remember the full details of them. Is this normal? I feel like this is because classes move so fast and I am so focused on moving from exam to exam that I have to literally flush the material out of my brain after one exam to study for the next one.</p>
<p>It's not that I don't know the material or that the concepts boggle me, I once knew the material like the back of my hand. I have just forgotten a decent amount of the fine details. Does this happen to anyone else? I know that if I cracked open the book for whatever subjects concept I am trying to remember, i'd be fine after a little digging, but i'm not able to recall ALL of the important information on hand. I can recall chunks of it, but not enough to piece together the whole story. Anyone else?</p>
<p>Have to agree with Niquii77. If you’re just “learning for the test” then you’re retention rate will not be very high. If you love you classes so much, maybe take a genuine interest in them. Not only will you understand and retain the material, you’ll enjoy doing so and good grades will flow naturally as a result.</p>
<p>I agree, I still remember all the material in all the classes where I really learned the material to begin with. Though I’ve had plenty of classes where I did cram and dump and don’t have any knowledge of it anymore, it’s not every single class that’s like that.</p>
<p>No one remember’s EVERYTHING [well most don’t]. You’re not actually data dumping if you can refresh just a bit and be fine, so that’s ok. Don’t worry, you’re fine, keep pushing on.</p>
<p>No one remembers everything. But you should still be retaining quite a bit. </p>
<p>A lot of your early engineering classes will seem like a series of disjointed subjects but as you get to the later classes, they start to integrate a lot of those earlier classes into a unified approach to solving engineering problems. If you have to go back and review past work all the time, then you may run into problems. </p>
<p>As a professional engineer, you may frequently need to combine the knowledge of several areas to solve problems. Your success as an engineer may hinge on your retained knowledge.</p>
<p>It also helps immensely to see the basics applied to real world problems. My internship has really helped me get tons of mileage out of my circuits class and physics topics like e&m and optics. The great thing about engineering isn’t just the knowledge base, it’s being able to methodically approach problems you don’t know the answer to. I’m an aerospace major but my job is all really EE troubleshooting.</p>
<p>As an engineering major, I can relate. Many of my professors, mainly math professor, admitted that we will not be using many concepts once we get into the field. For example, my Calc 2 professor told us that we will never have to integrate by hand. So if you can’t recall how to integrate by substiti and find</p>
<p>As a mechanical engineering major, I can relate. Many of my professors, mainly math professor, admitted that we will not be using many concepts once we get into the field. For example, my Calc 2 professor told us that we will never have to integrate by hand. So if you can’t recall how to integrate by substitution, or find a volume of revolution or something I think you will be fine. However, like others have pointed out, you may need to remember the material in order to succeed in upcoming classes that are related. I personally feel that it’s really important to remember your physics, cause the material all builds and relates to each other.</p>
<p>In short, yes it’s normal to not remember everything learned in previous semesters especially as an engineering major.</p>