'Alien language' keeps student organized
Student's shorthand helps him remember; serves as key for studying
Morgan Schneider
Issue date: 10/30/08 Section: Focus
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He doesn't have a photographic memory. But he does have a personal own brand of shorthand. He condenses ideas and concepts into a few symbols, as opposed to several lines or paragraphs of notes, which enables him to study quickly and more efficiently.
"Some people looking at my shorthand might think that it is an alien language, but it's really English," Stolyarov said.
His shorthand is one of his keys to helping retain and memorize concepts and ideas conveyed in class lectures. It's comprised of complex-looking icons that represent words, sounds or ideas. Stolyarov began developing his note-taking style at 16, when he was a junior in high school. He said that he had a "really irrationally demanding history teacher" who insisted upon incredibly detailed notes on a daily basis. Writing regular notes longhand, he said, would have taken far too long.
"I decided to being tinkering with abbreviations and ways to cut out unnecessary letters," he said.
His system began with simple abbreviations for common terms, such as "as," "under" or "over," and common verbs, such as "is," "was" and "will be." He then developed abbreviations for specific sounds in the English language, and began creating characters to represent those sounds. Later, as his style continued to evolve, he added superscripts and subscripts to represent vowels and certain consonant patterns.
He said that it's not a difficult system for him to remember, but it did frustrate his history teacher.
"He had no real way to stop me because I could read out loud everything I wrote almost as well as I could read English," he said.
Mnemonic devices also come into Stolyarov's arsenal for memorization and information-retention. The key for his studying, note-taking and memorization is organization.
"I do need to study and what helps me to remember is the way I organize everything," Stolyarov said. "It helps me see things in a glance what otherwise would have taken more time to see."
Though he classified himself as "probably the kind of person who overstudies," he said he despises cramming. He usually begins studying three or four days in advance and won't study the night before a test.
"Reviewing a little bit, an hour a day, or an hour and a half if you must, is the best way to keep your life sane and to cover the material," he said.
His memory, he said, is pretty good, especially when he can find ways to conceptualize the material. His shorthand allows him to recall essentially any lecture nearly verbatim.
Students at Hillsdale can benefit from his scrupulous note-taking style, too. He said that he often creates study guides and posts them to AssociatedContent.com, where anyone can access them. He also makes a small amount of money for every page hit.
To help with memorization, Stolyarov encourages his fellow students to actively engage themselves with their notes, and not simply reread them.
"Mostly what is important is being able to understand it and being able to explain it to yourself or to someone else," he said. "If you can talk about it to somebody or explain it coherently to someone else, then you know it pretty well."
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