"think about the history that goes along with each president"
How I did it: It took only a little over an hour! Much less time than I thought.
First, I thought I'd just read the names in groups of three, to get a rhythm going, but that was taking too long, so I thought, there has to be a better way. However, this did prove useful later, if you happen to forget something, if you had a rhythm of groups of three presidents going, it somehow makes them easier to recall.
In looking for a "better way", I looked online and found a bunch of "how to memorize the US Presidents" guides online, but they were all focused on stupid techniques (that I've tried in the past) of making up a funny, unrelated story, using mnemonics, associating their names with silly images, etc. I didn't want to do that crap, I wanted to memorize the U.S. presidents so I can have a better understanding of history, not just so that I can recite the list of names.
I ended up finding this page (
http://www.ubersite.com/m/65357) which was absolutely wonderful, because it described each president, which helped you remember them much better. I read the section on each chunk of presidents, and worked on memorizing each chunk at a time before moving on to the next chunk. That helped more than anything else! I didn't always draw on that site's little story about each president, sometimes I drew on what I remembered from my school days, or for more obscure presidents, I read their Wikipedia entry, which made them much more memorable.
I used the five fingers of one hand, starting from my thumb, to count the presidents as I recited their names, and found that really helped, because I associated each president with a finger, which really helped with listing them out, and it also helped you remember what number each president was (e.g. the 8th president is on my middle finger) etc. and helped me keep my place. Also, if, for instance, when I'm at Lincoln (who everyone knows is the 16th president) and I'm not back at my thumb again, I know I've missed somebody. You could probably use two hands too, if you wanted.
Also, I used this page (
http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/) to check my answers as I went along (since it has a cleaner list of the presidents that the other webpage).
And then, that was it! Probably the fastest 43things goal I've ever accomplished!
Lessons & tips: It helps if you have some knowledge of U.S. history. Doesn't need to be a lot, just bits and pieces from your elementary school lessons. Nothing complicated, just remembering stuff like, Washington's the first president, Lincoln=> Civil War, 16th President. Etc. I mostly memorized in chunks, so for me, Washington through Jackson was already in my head. So I worked on the Van Buren->Buchanan chunk, and then you know that Buchanan was the president before Lincoln, and everyone knows Lincoln was assassinated, so you just need to know Andrew Johnson was his VP, and Grant was the Union Army general so he'd obviously be the next guy, then you just have to work on memorizing the sequence from Hayes to Cleveland.
So I had two pre-1900s chunks.
Then I had the pre-FDR chunk, and it helps if you think about what was going on then, e.g. associating Coolidge with the roaring twenties, Hoover with the great depression, etc. Then I did the FDR-JFK chunk, and the post JFK chunk, much of which I was actually alive for, so after then I just use my own memory.
Resources: These are the links I used:
Apr 11, 2010, 04:48PM PDT
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seebimull cheered this 22 months ago
