Bullish Life: How To Remember Names (Without Stupid Mnemonic Devices)

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGloss.

I teach evening classes to adults, and I often have about 90 students at a time. I remember all their names (at least the names of the students who show up regularly).

My first year of teaching, I didn’t. I just gave up: there are 16 of them per class and only one of me, and also a lot of them are named “Iftikhar” and “Joo-Eun.”

Once, I forgot a student’s name, and he said, “It’s John. John. Like a toilet.” And that made me sad. And I did indeed think of a toilet every time I called on him. This is not how John or I want to live.

There are some very good ways to remember names.

First, let’s get this out of the way. Do not say, “Oh, I’m terrible with names.” Wrote commenter Bob V. about this column, “Whenever I hear a student say that they are not good at math, I want to tell them that I’m not good at juggling either. I tried it for about five minutes once and gave up.” Same with being on time or drawing or even carrying a tune. Saying you suck at something that you have failed to research and practice is a weak cop-out.

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing on Sunday night of the Women in Comedy Festival.