Here’s an interesting phenomenon about memory. I sometimes remember things in an indirect way, that is, rather than remembering something directly, I remember how it deviates from the default. Two examples:
- On my father’s old car, I remembered how to open the window as “push the switch in the opposite way to what seems like the right direction.”
- On my computer, I remember how to find things about PhD vivas as “really these ought to be classified under research, but there’s already a directory called ‘external examining’ under teaching, so go in there and look for the directory called extExams and then the sub-directory called PhD“.
It makes me wonder what other things that I do have a similar convoluted story in my memory, but where the process just all happens pre-consciously.