Making it Stick! Memory and ADHD for College with Daniella Karidi, Ph.D.
Memory isn’t just about recall — it’s about learning, encoding, storing, and retrieving information in ways that actually work with your brain. In this conversation, Pete Wright and Nikki Kinzer continue the ADHD in College series with returning guest Dr. Daniella Karidi, diving deep into the practical study strategies that help students and adults build lasting memory.
From note-taking that actually supports learning, to strategies for sleep, nutrition, and asking for help, Daniella lays out a roadmap that makes studying less overwhelming and more effective. Whether you’re heading into a new semester, studying for certification, or just trying to remember what’s in that self-help book you just read, this episode gives you tools that can help you work with your ADHD brain — not against it.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on True Story FM. I'm Pete Wright, and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer. Hello, Nikki.
Nikki Kinzer
Well, hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright
Okay. Are you, what, what is the, before we get into the show proper, we're going to be talking about ADHD and memory. What is one thing with your own memory that you would like to learn a strategy to support today?
Nikki Kinzer
everything. I have a horrible memory. Um, yeah, I'm trying though. I'm trying. Cause I know I'm, I'm being, I'm beating myself up already.
Pete Wright
Okay. All right.
Nikki Kinzer
And, um, and it's not an ADHD memory issue. It's a menopause being over 50 issue. And, um,
Pete Wright
Oh, yeah, that's a different one.
Nikki Kinzer
it's a different kind of memory memory loss, but it's the same memory loss. Like I feel you believe me. I feel you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah.
Pete Wright
There's only one memory. OK, well, this is going to be really fun. I think this is going to be really fun. We're talking about ADHD and memory, particularly geared toward our college student folks as we continue our series on ADHD in college.
Pete Wright
Before we dig in, though, just real quick, this show is powered by our member community. If this show has ever helped you, we're asking for your support on Patreon at patreon.com slash the ADHD podcast. Learn more about our benefits and bonuses and then come hang out with us in our ADHD discord, real time conversation and support, accountability, jokes and the works all at take control. ADHD dot com slash discord. Past episodes, our mailing list and all our socials are at take control.
Pete Wright
ADHD. We're continuing our college series today with a returning friend of the show, Dr. Daniela Caridi. You may remember Daniela from our recent conversation on memory and ADHD, and today she's here to take us deeper into the lecture hall, the library, and the late night study session to talk about practical real-world strategies for building memory, managing attention, and studying effectively with ADHD. Daniela is the founder of ADHD Time, a board member of CHADD
Pete Wright
Greater Los Angeles, and has spent her career helping students and professionals navigate the
Pete Wright
unique learning challenges and strengths of the ADHD brain. Today, she's bringing those insights straight to all of us. Daniela, welcome back to the show.
Daniela Karidi
Thank you for having me. My favorite topics, learning and memory. So we're good.
Nikki Kinzer
We're very excited to have you because the last time we had you on the show, we kind
Pete Wright
Outstanding.
Nikki Kinzer
of dipped into a little bit of college studying stuff. And then we sort of put that to the side because we were talking about memory more in general terms. So yes, we were very excited. It's the great time to have you back as we're getting ready to be back in school. And yeah, excited to have you here.
Pete Wright
you know and i will do this for everybody listening if you haven't listened to the first conversation with Daniela. They're going to be a great part one, part two. You should just listen to them back to back. I'm going to put the link, direct link to that episode in the show notes so you can listen to it together. It's just, it'll be, you know, an hour and a half straight of Daniela and it's going to be perfect. So with that, the college series. Today's, I just more
Nikki Kinzer
She's like, really? Yeah. Yes. It's going to be great.
Pete Wright
Daniela Caridi all day. It's all Daniela. You'll never forget Daniela Caridi. So we're talking about our practical study strategies for college students and others who want to build their skills around retention and memory and all of those things.
Nikki Kinzer
yeah I really want to kind of highlight that too right because I know this is a college series and some people might think well that doesn't apply to me but I think that so many of these things that we're going to be talking about do apply, whether you're looking to get a certification or you're just getting some extra, you're just taking some classes on the side, but also you just want to retain the self-help book that you just read. Right. So I just wanted to bring that. Yeah.
Daniela Karidi
I'm going to start with actually asking you guys a question. Do you know what is the number three predictors of success in college?
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah. No, but I should know.
Pete Wright
I don't.
Nikki Kinzer
Dang it.
Pete Wright
I have no excuse.
Nikki Kinzer
Please. Enlighten us.
Daniela Karidi
So going to classes,
Pete Wright
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer
Okay. That makes sense.
Daniela Karidi
charging your battery, which they mean sleep and food,
Pete Wright
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer
Yes, that makes sense too.
Daniela Karidi
okay, and knowing how to ask for help.
Pete Wright
it's it's interesting that nowhere in there did you say memory
Daniela Karidi
Because having a bad memory or a good memory doesn't predict success in college.
Nikki Kinzer
Oh, that's...
Daniela Karidi
Because we can train memory. Memory is a muscle. But if you don't go to class and you don't get exposure to the material, you will not learn it. You will not remember it. You will not understand it. If your battery is not charged, like I don't know what about you, but my phone has like a million photos. And at some point it always gives me this message that it's overwhelmed and it can't do anything anymore.
Daniela Karidi
If you're not eating and drinking, you are not giving your brain the opportunity to learn, to remember.
Pete Wright
And this is, you know, it's something, Nikki, we leaned in on last week, just but more from the perspective of, you know, your instructor. Does your instructor notice if you're going to class or not? Those kinds of questions. Well, let's just underscore that again. Different reason. So many reasons to go to class, charge your battery, be present.
Daniela Karidi
Yes. And then knowing how to ask to help was a surprising predictor. When we worked at services
Nikki Kinzer
Right, right.
Daniela Karidi
for students, we thought memory would be up there or, you know, having extra jobs maybe is a bad thing for college. Maybe, you know, all those things have some correlation, but the biggest effect was the ability to ask for help saying, I don't remember, I don't understand, I need accommodations, I need help. And then the last thing that surprised us that was significantly
Daniela Karidi
correlated is loneliness. And this we find every age. If you have friends, if you are socially active, then you have higher success as a retiree, as a college student, as a mom. So knowing those basics, that asking help, sleeping, going to class, and finding a social
Daniela Karidi
surrounding will help your learning. Now we can talk about how we can be better learners and rememberers. So let's start with the basic question. What's the difference between learning and remembering? Okay. So if you ask me, truthfully, in everyday life, it's an artificial difference. It's researchers love that question. They love to separate learning and remembering. But in everyday life, learning and remembering really go together. You cannot learn without using your memory. You cannot remember information without learning it first. So they go together. And the best example I like to think about is driving a car. Okay. When you're learning to drive a car, you have to think about, okay, I need to press this. I need to move that. I need to set this. I need to like, there's all these like little steps that I need to do. But now as a good driver, many times you'd ask, wait, did I remember to lock my car? Did I remember to press the park button? So we learned a skill, and now we're asking questions about remembering the details.
Pete Wright
Can you give us an example from the perspective of a learner?
Daniela Karidi
When we talk about learning material for a test in a class, let's say we're taking chemistry, or we're taking history 101, okay? We're taking one of the intro classes, our first two years of college, and we need to study for a test. The number one thing we need to remember is that our information needs to be encoded. Remember the three steps of memory. We need to encode information, we need to store the information, and we retrieve the information. So encoding information is where we pay attention to what the professor says, and we convert that information into Lego blocks in our brain, right? We convert them into pieces in our brain. Then we need to store that information somewhere. In the case of History 101, we might want to store it under historical facts. In the case of chemistry, we want to mighty... so putting it in the right box in our brain. And then when the test comes, we need to retrieve it. We need to take all these little pieces and rebuild it into the story that the professor wants us to know. Any step of that can fail. So when we say, I forgot, we use one word to describe a potential failure that could have happened in any one of those steps. We could have been distracted, and we did not pay well attention, and we did not encode the information properly. So we did not convert the information into those little pieces that need to be stored in our brain. we could have put it in the wrong storage bin. So we were sitting in that history class, but we weren't really paying attention because we were watching the YouTube at the same time or because we were thinking about our breakup with our girlfriend or because whatever, we were just hungry, which is a common problem with ADHD that we forgot to eat or we ate too much, any one of those options. We are now not paying attention enough to the information and we could then store it in the wrong place that's hard to retrieve. That feeling that you get when you're sitting in a room and you say, I know that, but I can't get it. That's because the path to finding it in the brain where we didn't put the trail clear enough.
Pete Wright
I, I, the sidebar question, because I, I feel like once again, you're talking to me and when I, and, and when you talk about, like, we use the word I forgot to define the myriad of possible, you know, failures in my memorization process. It also implies to me that maybe I'm not doing the right. I'm not I'm not aware. Well, I can guarantee I'm not always aware that there are three steps in coding, storing and retrieving when I'm thinking about memorizing something. And maybe I'm putting an outsized focus on one at the detriment of another. Right. Like it feels like, okay, I'm just, if I'm just reading, you know, flashcards, am I really storing them in the right place? Am I really doing the work? Like, is it, is that even possible? Or am I misconstruing the facts?
Daniela Karidi
No, no. So when we want to be successful learners, there's a few things we can do to increase our encoding, to improve our storage, and to improve our retrieval. So let's start with encoding because it's the first step. One thing that can help encoding, which is the one that's the hardest for us, is avoid distractions and avoid multitasking.
Daniela Karidi
So if you are trying to learn information and you are at the same time doing something else, you already decreased your chances of being able to retrieve that by 72%.
Nikki Kinzer
Wow.
Pete Wright
Whoa. I would not have put that number that high. All right. 72%.
Daniela Karidi
So what can you do? Because our ADHD brain gets tired of the professor saying the same thing twice. If we are watching a podcast and we feel like we need to be doing another thing at the same time, that other thing has to be low cognitive demand. It has to be something that we're really automatic at and good at. So it could be playing with a fidget that doesn't require attention. It could be for some people. I have a student that used to sit there and knit all the time because knitting already at this point was so automatic for her. But if I'm a beginning knitter, that won't work because I'm doing something that's cognitively demanding. So I can fold laundry while I'm watching TV.
Daniela Karidi
I can't fold laundry while I'm trying to have a social conversation because that is more cognitively demanding. And I won't remember what you told me.
Pete Wright
And I can't read a textbook for chemistry while I'm looking at flashcards on my computer for history.
Daniela Karidi
But you could listen to the same song you've been listening for 70 times already, but not
Pete Wright
I
Daniela Karidi
new song. So what we find in some of the studies that if your brain is too quiet, it actually is a decrement, especially to those with ADHD. If we make that little cry at room where everything
Daniela Karidi
suddenly, suddenly we're distracted internally. Suddenly we can like hear our own heart rate even. Okay. So the idea is add distractions, but they have to be low cognitive demand. A song you've been listened to a million times, not the new song your roommate just recorded.
Pete Wright
This is the benefit of the sound machine apps that will put you in a coffee shop, right? Sometimes even I loved working in a coffee shop, but sometimes even a coffee shop can
Pete Wright
be high cognitive demand. But the sound of a coffee shop is actually does raise the floor to the point that I can engage.
Daniela Karidi
And what is really cool to do is to do this exercise where you're about to start to do something and you say, okay, is this cognitively demanding? I'm learning for a topic I really don't know enough. I'm really stressed about, I am going to reduce everything else to the minimum. So sometimes I ask people to literally take a little marker and write with a one to 10 is that
Daniela Karidi
what I'm trying to learn, how hard I think it will be to remember this. If my number is high, I need to actively reduce as many possible distractions. So putting that awareness. Another tip to encoding memory is actively understanding how I'm going to retrieve the memory, which is stupid because I'm going to the last step to be better at the first step. So here's what it is. If this test is going to be in a lab, for example, where I'm going to need to pour chemicals and do an active experiment, or is this test going to be a multiple choice test?
Daniela Karidi
Is this going to be a paper I'm going to write later that I need to analyze the information? Or is this going to be a conversation I'm going to present in class? the way I'm going to retrieve it could help understand the best way to learn it.
Pete Wright
Okay, can we dig in a little bit more on that for people who are thinking, so what do I do if it's a presentation and I have to learn material for presentation? I need some examples.
Daniela Karidi
So if it's a presentation that you're going to be doing,
Daniela Karidi
and what you're doing now is flashcards, there's a very challenging, that's not related to the task itself. But I would say put yourself on Zoom, record yourself or on your own, like put on a recording app and record yourself talking about the topic because you're going to be retrieving it in a oral mode. Thinking about the way you're going to retrieve the information, will you need to know the list of chemicals that create this effect that you're learning about, or you just need to
Daniela Karidi
understand the effect? So if you need to understand the effect and be able to explain it and be able to interpret it, be able to recreate it, then that's what you need to be doing in your learning.
Pete Wright
How does that relate to the constraint of studying for the test, right? Because it sounds like you're literally describing, if I need to understand these facts because I'm going to be tested on them, Doesn't that go counter to the ideology of most professors, which is you're studying to learn information for life.
Pete Wright
And if you're only studying for the test, there's risk you're going to toss the information as soon as you finish the test.
Daniela Karidi
Yes and no. If education was pretty and would work towards the goals we want, yes, you are 100% accurate. But life doesn't always work like that. We need to sometimes study chemistry 101 to be able to get into the advanced levels or because we just need it as a requirement. And we just need to learn things by heart and pass the test.
Daniela Karidi
Knowing the purpose of the learning could also affect the way you learn the information. So I learned neuroscience and I really struggled because I'm dyslexic with all those words of the brain parts and stuff. And I kept on reminding myself that I'm doing this so I can help other people with ADHD understand their brain. I literally put that on the post-it when I was trying to study. I'm doing this to help others because that motivation was needed to get that list of parts of brain.
Daniela Karidi
I passed the exam. Do I now remember all those names? No. I remember the ones I keep on using a lot in my talks in the world of ADHD. But I had to pass that test to be able to go to the next level, which is learning about learning and memory.
Pete Wright
Yeah, of course.
Nikki Kinzer
Right. I have a question about like multiple choice tests, right? Because those come up a lot. And so how do you apply what you're talking about if you know that most of the midterms and exams are going to be multiple choice and you're going to have to figure out what's different between A, B, C, and D when they're all just a little bit, you know, they're very similar.
Daniela Karidi
So to start with, if I know that the information I'm going to be doing is going to be presented in multiple choice, I know that I'm talking about information that will give me a lot of
Daniela Karidi
cues. I'm going to have these, like, I'm not going to have to totally rely on my memory in some way, because I'm going to be cued. Someone's going to ask me, oh, is working memory a problem with ADHD? Okay. And I have to remember the definition of working memory to answer that question. I have to remember that it has limited capacity. I have to remember that ADHDers struggle with it. There's all this information I do need, but someone gave me a clue, right? Someone put the word working
Daniela Karidi
memory there. So I teach my students to circle the clues that were given inside the question. Things that are good recall, oh, working memory. What do I have in my brain? Sometimes I even say, spill it out next to it, right next to it, everything you know before you read the answers, everything you kind of remember about working memory, and then see what matches kind of. And then if there's two that are very close, hey, you got four, you cut it down to two. That's
Daniela Karidi
higher chance. Now we need to figure out what is the trick here? What is the difference between
Daniela Karidi
those two? And what can I use in my knowledge and in my memory? And now I'm going back from, instead of going from encoding to storage to retrieval, I'm going, I call a digging as a bitch. I'm going digging in my brain, right? Because I have a path. I have a question. I'm going backwards to dig. If you had an open-ended question, you can't do that. It's really hard. You need to build the structure to be able to succeed. I will also add that the best strategy for learning for a multiple choice question exam is creating questions. Is as a learner, instead of only creating flash
Pete Wright
Sure.
Nikki Kinzer
Okay.
Daniela Karidi
clouds, I have to tell you that that's the best strategy for learning information in general, being an active learner by creating questions. What could someone ask me about this? What information would be important to understand?
Daniela Karidi
Can I take this information and put it in a question? What will be the possible multiple choices about what is working memory? Let's create those answers.
Nikki Kinzer
And there's tools that will help you do that.
Daniela Karidi
Right.
Pete Wright
all kinds of tools, especially now.
Daniela Karidi
Yep.
Nikki Kinzer
Right? Right.
Pete Wright
Open up ChatGPT and say, I'm about to take a test on working memory. Please test me on it by giving me a set of 50 questions that'll help me assess my own knowledge.
Daniela Karidi
And even better, create those questions and put it in the chat and say, what are the possible answers? You create the questions. If you are an active learner and you can create the questions, there's a higher success that you will remember it.
Pete Wright
Oh, sure, of course. Yeah, you're not just using it to test yourself.
Nikki Kinzer
Okay.
Pete Wright
You write the questions.
Daniela Karidi
So you want to see if those questions are good questions or what are the possible answers. And then so that is, so if you create the questions, you have a higher success of chances of being able to process the information. So when I read a book, I have a free book club about ADHD. It's called Focus on ADHD Books. And we read a book once a month about ADHD. It helps me stay accountable because I kept on buying these books at the conferences and not reading it.
Nikki Kinzer
Okay.
Daniela Karidi
And it was driving me crazy. So I created this group. And when I read the book, I know I'm going to have a group discussion about it. So I like to write questions that could that, you know, oh, wait, what did the author want me to get from this? What is the question that I can ask if they were my students to see if I know the information?
Pete Wright
so let's step back to the three to the three steps because i want to i'd like to take a learner through the process of actually going to class whether attending online or going to a
Nikki Kinzer
you
Pete Wright
classroom because we have some traditional sort of stereotypical approaches to learning what it looks like to learn. Okay, you take out your piece of paper and you write or you get your computer out and your iPad or whatever, and you're taking notes. But maybe you were never taught how to take notes. And so you're just trying to write everything the instructor says or you open your textbook and And oh, you've got a highlighter and you just highlight everything. Yeah, I if if your approach is on actually remembering the information you're trying to ingest, what is your strategy for like 8 a.m. day one going to class?
Nikki Kinzer
Thank you.
Pete Wright
How do you how where do you put your mind in terms of being a memory focused student?
Daniela Karidi
Okay, I'll start with this. Encoding information, in addition to paying attention, which we've said before, requires organization of that information.
Nikki Kinzer
Thank you.
Daniela Karidi
So if you want to encode the information well as a good learner, you want it to be organized in a way that makes sense for your brain. Organizing requires having, the best way I can think about it is like shelves. Like kind of think about having shelves for your books in the library.
Daniela Karidi
In order to be a good organizer, you really need to have the right setup in your brain. So when you're taking notes, the number one goal needs to be setting up the information, kind of creating those structures. Oh, Daniela said working memory has a limitation of capacity of up to seven things.
Daniela Karidi
So I want to write that down. I put that information. Let's say I'm just writing what she said. I'm not organizing now because all I'm doing is hearing what you said and repeating it on a piece of paper.
Daniela Karidi
That's better than not taking any notes. OK, so taking something is better than nothing because it helps us stay on track with the speaker. OK, we are processing what the speaker said. We're converting it into words and then we're using our pen, our typewriter, whatever, to create new words that we can look at. So we reinforce the information. better than nothing. But if I really want to do it successfully, I want to put...
Nikki Kinzer
And I just want to say that I'm doing that right now.
Pete Wright
literally doing it right now.
Nikki Kinzer
I'm taking notes right now and I'm doing exactly what you're saying. So. so
Daniela Karidi
So organizing that information would be putting a title above it as you were going. Oh, she talked about working memory. Now she's changing topics. She's switching to talk about ADHD. I'm going to switch. I'm going to put a title, ADHD. That putting the titles and subtitles while you're taking notes is the number one tool that you can improve your note taking and your memory.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Daniela Karidi
What you did when you create a title is you created a shelf, an organizing. This belongs in this category. She's talking about this now. If you are smart and you're taking notes, you use erasable pens or you go back and you take an active Google sheet where you can go back and add the title, change the title, put it on the side and then, you know, oh my God, now she finally gave
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Daniela Karidi
me the title at the end of the, you know, because she's not the best speaker. So she finally gave me the title at the end. So I'm going to put it now on the side. So the date of the class is a good way to start because it gives you a basic structure. So if you were so spaced out, let's say,
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Daniela Karidi
I don't know, something really happened. You stayed out partying too late. You really are not relating to the topic today. Then at least you know which class you missed. You didn't take to go hunt down someone and ask for help and get their notes. So putting the title, especially if
Pete Wright
Right, right. Okay, fair.
Daniela Karidi
you have ADHD, is a good starting point. Also, if you're new at this note-taking and you're new at the college thing, start with the title, start with the topic of the class, and at least have something in front of you. So like you can't go wrong with, let's say all you had today was the title and the date, it's better again from nothing. The enemy of note taking is perfection.
Daniela Karidi
You are not looking for perfection here. You're looking for support of your memory.
Pete Wright
that I love I love that you just said that because I think there is a certain when you look at let's say college productivity YouTube there is a certain amount of performative productivity where you see these people who have taken extraordinarily artful notes on their tablets and they're colored and
Pete Wright
designs and pictures that they've drawn and drawn and they're tracing other elements.
Pete Wright
And it feels like if you didn't, if you hadn't stopped to think about it, that's what everybody should strive toward is just making the notes look pretty.
Daniela Karidi
Looking pretty is a personal preference and not a goal by itself.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Daniela Karidi
There are people that are ADHD and anxiety and dyslexia and, and, and, and, and, and, and we know that the more ends we're adding with the ADHD, the more challenging would be
Daniela Karidi
something like making it pretty. Okay.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Daniela Karidi
And I'm going to add that, and I know that this might sound a bit bad, but the gender that you are, might affect that. Many girls or people that identify as a girl prefer, find it looking pretty, very critical. And it could be because that was what they were told to expect because someone remarked more on their handwriting and on their note taking.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Daniela Karidi
And suddenly that becomes more important to them. And we find that that's a social expectation that affects the way our note taking happens.
Pete Wright
Right. Fascinating.
Daniela Karidi
And we need to remember the purpose of the note taking.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Daniela Karidi
If it being pretty and organized and color code helps your brain, go ahead. If the idea that it needs to look the specific way is a decrement, let go of that. That is not the purpose of the note taking.
Pete Wright
my notes always look like a scandinavian stereo right there's just there lots of lines and boxes
Pete Wright
i always i mean i legitimately always liked cornell notes because everything was in structured boxes and things that I could fill in. That always worked well for me because I'd always know on the page where to find something.
Daniela Karidi
If you are able to prepare for a class, let's say you are one of those rare age years that can plan in advance, creating those kind of little structures before you start your lecture, Even if you do it right, right as you're sitting before the teacher starts speaking, where you can put a little box where you could put three takes away, take away from today's class.
Daniela Karidi
Three questions I might ask might be asked in the exam from this class. One thing I didn't understand. So I create these notebooks and I literally fill it out on like one of like, you know, the days before the class would start. I'd fill out 12 because if the class at 12, I'd fill out 15. And it would literally say that space for the date, a title, and something I learned from
Daniela Karidi
the class, something I might be asked, and something I'm not sure about. And if that's the only thing I got from the notes, I still find it as an amazing win.
Pete Wright
Let's say we have figured out our notes process, right, that works for our brain, whether we're and washi taping or we're just mind mapping our way
Nikki Kinzer
Chicken scratch.
Pete Wright
to chicken scratch. Next step, right? Now we've taken the notes. What's the next thing you wanna do? Memory focused student.
Daniela Karidi
So a memory focused student understands that repetition in a variety of ways is the trick. so repetition in the same way where we're processing the information the same way exactly we um like we reread it again and again and again it's the example that a lot of students have where we just highlight everything again repetition for the sake of repetition is not sufficient we want to repeat in a variety of ways and then people look at me and they're like what do you mean a variety
Daniela Karidi
of ways like I have one type of notes I can read them and I'm like well you can read them but you You can also put them on a technology and have them read back to you so you can hear them. Okay. You can read them out loud and listen to yourself. You can teach them to someone else. I was obsessed with teaching my teddy bear history facts. I later brought this teddy bear to the exam with me because I was like, okay, you learned as much as I did. You should come.
Nikki Kinzer
Right.
Daniela Karidi
The idea is that teaching is a really good way to learn and relearn information.
Nikki Kinzer
Totally. Absolutely.
Pete Wright
you
Daniela Karidi
So you can read it, you can hear it, you can make it distinct. And how do we make information distinct? So highlights originally started as a way to make information distinct. I'm going to highlight the most important part and make it distinct. What happens many times when we have ADHD, we actually use the highlighter just to help us stay focused on the lines.
Nikki Kinzer
Yes.
Daniela Karidi
We kind of like, oh, I'm going to like. And the idea of like, oh, my God, to switch to a different color. That's it. I lost my focus because I just had to switch colors. So sometimes that doesn't work for our brains.
Daniela Karidi
So the idea of making it distinct is literally how can I make it pop out in my brain? Do I have to make a short YouTube? Do I have to make a cartoon? Do I have to draw a picture? Do I have to create a map? I had a student that literally took like these flashcards and created the timeline. Again, we're back to history. I'm sorry. I taught that for a while. So that's in my brain. So you had to create the she created a timeline for the events that she was studying in her dorm room, like on the wall with all these all these cards.
Daniela Karidi
And then her roommate, for some unclear reason, took it all off. OK, so she had to rearrange it, not having the information in front of her. And that rearranging actually helped her brain the most. Because she had to take the information and manipulate it and do something without.
Daniela Karidi
So repetition in a variety of ways, making the information as distinct as possible and then shifting it around.
Daniela Karidi
So if I told you there are three stages of memory and I kept on saying encoding, storing, and retrieving, now I would say, what is the last stage of memory? Can you walk backwards? Can you tell me backwards the stages of memory?
Pete Wright
Yeah. Right, right. Retrieving, storing and encoding.
Nikki Kinzer
Retrieving.
Daniela Karidi
Right. But so now you know you did not really have the information settled in your brain because
Nikki Kinzer
But I forgot the story.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer
Right.
Daniela Karidi
you could not take it and manipulate it and change its order. And what professors like to do is they like to ask you the question in a different order
Nikki Kinzer
I know.
Daniela Karidi
than what you studied it because they want to really make sure that you have that information
Nikki Kinzer
Ya. Ya. Yeah.
Daniela Karidi
settled in your brain. So organize, pay attention, repetition, but repetition in a variety of ways, not just repetition, and then manipulation if possible.
Pete Wright
I'm not. there are there are all kinds of apps again in in terms of performative uh studying there are all kinds of apps now that uh that talk about spaced repetition as you know we're i'm gonna we're gonna give you these flashcard tests and when you get them right we're gonna put them on a different sort of shelf and we're going to drill them at a different pace than the ones that you don't get right. And we're going to continue to shake things up by how long between instances you get the answer correct. What's your take on spaced repetition? Because it sounds like spaced repetition is repetition, but not distinct.
Daniela Karidi
So that is really good if all the information has to be recalled and not reprocessed. And I'll give you what I mean as the example. So if I need to remember some science facts, if I need to just remember history facts, if I just need to remember the body parts of the brain, that kind of repetition could be good for you. Because what we're doing is we're learning how to just recall a bunch of information. But if you're going to be able to have to answer a open question about how the cell processes information, knowing the pieces of the cell, that rapid repetition will not be sufficient. So when is rapid repetition like that really helpful? When we need to recall information that is very fact-based, not necessarily related to with... So if we go back to that biology example,
Daniela Karidi
I am a professor and I want you to understand how this cell works. My first test might be only about the parts of the cell. And that rapid repetition could help because we're just asking about the parts. You kind of like just need to understand the name of this part and what it does, the name what it does the name and what it does now i want you to understand how cells do things really and that the repetition is not going to help that you need to do active learning where you actually
Daniela Karidi
have to be able to explain to someone else how a cell what is is processes stuff okay as you can see i don't remember anything of my biology
Pete Wright
One of the other sidebar questions I have, and we talked about this a little bit in our last conversation, but I'm but I'm wondering if if there is a different sort of mode we need to be considering regarding state dependence in in memorizing and particularly in encoding that, you know, like you said, something that really resonated with me that you taught your teddy bear.
Daniela Karidi
you
Pete Wright
So you brought the teddy bear to the exam. That's sort of an icon or a fetish object around that might help you recall. Is there something to that? Do you want to be do you want to spend some time studying in the classroom where you're going to take the test when it's empty so that you are, I don't know, in the have the right vibes when it comes time to actually take the test thoughts?
Daniela Karidi
so we know that in extreme cases the differences between an amazing piano performance in a like you know we're talking about the top five pianists in the world having their stool that they're used to increase their accuracy in the performance. But when we're talking about a typical college student, what works for you works for you, and the differences are very minor. So my point is, if you're going to study for a chemistry test, and you're going to go on the football field and sit outside there and watch the football players practice while you're trying to study for your chemistry test, the likelihood of you remembering anything besides maybe how nice it was outside is very low. But if you're going to, if you're studying sport medicine, and you are
Daniela Karidi
actually, you know, sitting there and looking at those football players, you're motivated, I'm helping them. That's my goal. They're my goal. They're why I'm doing this, because I want to be better at sport medicine, because I want to help them. You actually will find that you'll remember even though we both studied for basic chemistry. So where you're studying can definitely affect your success, can definitely affect your recall and your memory,
Daniela Karidi
but it's not as clear a link as you're saying, oh, I'm taking a test, I should study in that space. But if you are studying for a one-on-one in history and you are able to sit in a classroom that is similar, that will actually help your brain shift into this is learning mode. This is why we say sometimes, you know, what you're doing in your bedroom
Daniela Karidi
should be your bedroom stuff. What you're doing in your living room should be your living room stuff. What you're doing, because our brain likes to put things in like, oh, I need to be now in this studying mode. I need to be now in learning mode. That's why we know that if you're studying
Pete Wright
Thank you.
Daniela Karidi
in a specific way, like I know there's a lot of it each years that don't like sitting at the desk, but actually like laying on the floor or laying in bed, but if they switch the side of the pillow. OK, let's say I'm a studier that likes to study in bed, but I sleep with my head on one side and I take my pillow, I turn it around. I put myself in a different angle. I'm still in my bed, but my brain is now triggered into learning mode and not sleeping mode.
Pete Wright
trained that, well, it's like reading in bed, right? If I really want to pay attention and ingest the book that I'm reading, I can't read in bed because reading in bed, I'm trained to have it put me to sleep. That's what I use as a thing to de-stress and relax. And if I really want to read something, I have to be on the couch under a light, actually engaging in the material.
Daniela Karidi
So it's kind of like, you know, I don't know if you remember this, the dog, the Pabllov dog, where like every time they ring a bell, they gave him food and then he got spit created in his mouth. And then at some point, if they ring the bell, even without the food, spit is being created.
Pete Wright
Yeah. Right.
Nikki Kinzer
Mm-hmm.
Daniela Karidi
We know that that happens to our brain. And we know that that will happen if we are sitting at the dining room table and that's where we only eat. And suddenly we're trying to study. We're going to get hungry.
Pete Wright
Yeah, right.
Nikki Kinzer
Right, right.
Daniela Karidi
So what we know with college kids is that do have limitations. We do have a problem that we can't say, oh, you know, just like, you know, because you have limited, you, you. So sometimes understanding that little changes can make a significant difference. Not using your desk in your chair to sit in doom scroll. Oh, I only doom scroll in my bed. So that way, if I'm sitting in my chair, this is working time.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer
Right.
Daniela Karidi
I mean, it's very little cheating things. It's creating these like structures and they're
Pete Wright
Okay.
Daniela Karidi
especially tricky because we also later create stupid rules. Like I don't like to exercise. And then I created this rule that if I'm full, if I just ate, I don't need to exercise. It's not good to exercise. Okay. Which is not the truth. And, but that obstacle in my brain. So let's not create rules that become obstacles let's create rules as long as they help us remember and learn
Nikki Kinzer
I know we're running out of time and I still wanted to talk about the other two points around the energy and also like asking for help, especially because I think that that's, in my experience, that's a big downfall for a lot of students as they don't advocate or they don't
Nikki Kinzer
get accommodations for whatever reason. So I don't know, can we touch base on those last two
Daniela Karidi
Yeah, definitely. I'm going to start actually with the storage one in the energy because we didn't speak about that a bit. Our brain needs time to make connections. And we do know that if you are sleep deprived, your brain will prioritize other things like survival over building more neural learning connections. So if you are not sleeping well or eating well, you're not letting your brain have the opportunity to cement that information into storage.
Daniela Karidi
So I sometimes tell college students, you need to remember that your brain is a machine that needs to be charged in order to be able to learn new knowledge and to recall old knowledge. It's not enough that we sleep well. And with ADHD, we kind of like struggle with those things. So we need reminders that these things are so critical for learning.
Daniela Karidi
There's been a bunch of studies with soldiers, with truck drivers, with pilots. It's impossible to learn new information and successfully recall information when your body is in fight mode. And when you don't sleep enough, your body thinks it's fight mode.
Nikki Kinzer
All right, good to know. So how do we encourage students if we have one that we may be, you know, supporting through college or we are the student and, you know, how, what are your tips or ideas around getting good sleep and, and paying attention to eating?
Nikki Kinzer
Like what, what are some ADHD friendly ways to do that?
Daniela Karidi
so so i think one is we need to understand why sleep is important we have this thing which is i call it revenge. I learned that from someone and I can't remember who I apologize, but it's the idea that we didn't get enough stuff done and then we feel so guilty and then we stay up all the night and to
Daniela Karidi
catch up. Also, some moms suffer from this because they don't have any control of their own time during the day and suddenly the evening comes and the night comes and they get a little bit of control. So now they're going to do all these things for themselves that they want to do. When you're in college, it's the first time where you don't have a strict structure like you had in high school. And I think that that's the place to be able to create some structure and rules for yourself that are friendly for college life. You should not be waking up at six in the morning,
Daniela Karidi
unless you do have to go to football, soccer practice, whatever. If you don't have to, I agree with that. But waking up in a semi-consistent time saying, I am going to wake up at 9.30 to 10.30 every day, even if I don't have a class. Creating that consistent wake-up time for your rhythm is very critical. Now, okay, there was a big party last night. There was a big event. I
Daniela Karidi
might struggle. But if you succeed to create that window of an hour of wake-up as consistent as
Daniela Karidi
possible, that will really help your sleep. Even if there's a night or two where you sleep less, having that consistent wake up really is productive. So what I'm trying to say as ADS years, we can't focus on everything. It's very hard. And if we say we need to go to bed by this in this hour, we do that revenge sleep thing, but it's easier to go backwards. I need to wake up at this in this hour. This is my wake up hour. Focus on the waking up instead of the going to sleep.
Pete Wright
I never had a sense, especially because, and I think this is why sleep revenge is so palatable in college, because there's so much going on at night. That's when everything is happening, whether it's study groups or social activities, parties, whatever. And so the cost of that, it makes it hard to imagine even 9.30 or 10.30, like that hour,
Pete Wright
that already stresses past Pete out.
Daniela Karidi
So So I chose an hour of 9.30, 10.30 because I have to say that a lot of universities did a lot of effort and canceled 8 o'clock classes as much as possible.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Daniela Karidi
And you will see that a lot of universities will not start classes before 9. The reason I say 9.30, 10 is because if you have once or twice a week a 9 o'clock class, those once or twice a week you're going to have to wake up earlier. So the other times of the week, you want to wake up close to that time.
Daniela Karidi
if you never have a nine o'clock class, let's say you're one of those lucky kids that never has a nine o'clock class or lucky professors, I hated teaching the nine o'clock class, then you can start every day at 11, 12, okay? I actually think we should think about all our college habits in a three-month window because I think that the way we try to make everything like, oh, I'm going to
Daniela Karidi
rest of my life, I'm going to wake up on time, I'm going to do this, I'm going to wake up early is
Daniela Karidi
wrong because our life is inconsistent, especially in college. There's semesters where we have morning classes the whole semester. There's semester we have morning and evening classes. There's semesters where there's more parties and semesters where it's winter and everyone's like snuggling in their beds and there's less. So understanding that thinking about your habits in semesters is actually another successful tip that increases your success. Instead of trying to do this for
Daniela Karidi
the rest of your college career. Let's try to do this for this semester. So I want to go back to what Nikki asked about asking. When we think about asking for help, there's a lot of reasons why we
Nikki Kinzer
Oh, I just want to know about asking for help. Yeah. Let's talk about accommodations and advocating for yourself. Thank you.
Daniela Karidi
could struggle. One is rejective sensitivity, where we're afraid that someone will say no, because we had really bad experiences in our past, because we tend to think of ourselves as, you know,
Daniela Karidi
negatively because we have all these bad associations and we have to work really hard in saying why we deserve this help so one tip i can say is literally writing out why you need the help like going into chat gpt and say why do i need accommodations why do i deserve accommodations asking someone asking your roommate that tells you just go ask for help you
Daniela Karidi
You can turn around and say to her, okay, can you tell me why I need that help?
Daniela Karidi
Can you tell me why? Because if we have that why, it's easier for us to shut down some of the negative voices. Then before we get in trouble, if we have a list of helpers, okay, this is a cheat sheet you can create. You can do it for your college kid. You can do it by yourself as a college person. You can do it. I have it as an adult. It's a little list of people that I know who I can go to in what kind of situation.
Daniela Karidi
So I have a friend that I can go to if I need to get my hair done because she always knows
Daniela Karidi
what to do and how to solve that, you know, the fashion friend. But then I also know that if I need professional help, there is a few coaches out there that are mentors, that are people that I can reach out to. If I create that before I'm in trouble, so if I create the list of resources before I'm in trouble. It's easier later to go like, oh, I have this list. I know who to go to. This is why
Daniela Karidi
when you go to like orientation, one of the tricks to do is to like in your phone, put in some of
Daniela Karidi
these resources while you're in orientation. Put the student service center, put the mental health resource line, put the suicide prevention line. I have to tell you that my kids' school, which they're amazing on the other side of their student id has those three phone numbers suicide prevention line um the school counselor and the school office just you know they're on the other side of their
Daniela Karidi
student id so create that for yourself already in a way that you can access it so because when you're in the need for help sometimes your brain might shut down it will be harder to find the resource It's easier if it's there.
Pete Wright
Can you elaborate on the connection? I'm thinking again, specifically about a student professor relationship or a student TA relationship, because sometimes I find students who are incredibly nervous to ask for help. They don't understand the purpose of asking for help. Topical help, subject matter help.
Pete Wright
I always found as a student that once I figured out how to ask the right question, explaining where there was a gap actually anchored the act of asking for help to help me remember the content. Is that is that real?
Daniela Karidi
Yes. So what, so what you did is you actively created the question. So you, you did an active
Pete Wright
Is that accurate?
Daniela Karidi
learning and so just, Oh, I can't remember, which is not clear enough. What can't you remember?
Daniela Karidi
How does, but you, instead of that said, this is what I don't understand, or this is what I don't remember. Or so yes, if you are about to reach out to a professor and writing out the question really helps you sometimes figure it out yourself, but also will help the professor help you.
Pete Wright
But...
Daniela Karidi
Because you now came with a clear, instead of like, I just don't remember, or I don't understand, you came with a clear, like, this is what I don't remember. This is what I don't understand.
Daniela Karidi
Remember that terrible note taking you said, like, oh my God, I didn't take good notes. Asking help from other students about saying, "Okay, I missed this one class, I need a note." Or asking for an accommodation of notes from someone else is a strategy to help with the note taking. I also say that some ADHD students, when they commit to be note takers for others, they do really well because they know someone else's,
Pete Wright
Oh, yeah.
Daniela Karidi
their accountability to someone. In my classes, I make everyone, at least one class, have to give notes to everyone.
Pete Wright
Oh, my gosh.
Nikki Kinzer
Oh, interesting.
Pete Wright
Outstanding.
Daniela Karidi
now so i if you need an accommodation because you can't do that you come up to me and you can ask an accommodation and i will take you out of the list of the pool and you won't have to do that and it's okay and you know i get that that not everyone can do that but 85 of my students can do
Nikki Kinzer
Thank you.
Daniela Karidi
it and everyone benefits because they all know that one day they're going to be taking notes for everyone. They all get everyone's notes and I get everyone's notes. So I now know what you think was important. I now know what you thought you understood and I can fix it if you got it wrong.
Pete Wright
Yeah. Yeah, that's outstanding. And everybody levels up because they're learning strategies
Nikki Kinzer
right
Pete Wright
from each other about good note-taking.
Daniela Karidi
And right. So you can create that group. You can, and this is where sometimes it's hard. I don't know anyone in class. I really struggle. Like I don't. So there's, there's a variety of ways you can do that. You can actively stand up for class stand that you need guts. You need to be a theater kid. You need to be one of those that feel comfortable standing up in class and saying, saying, I want a group, you know, to take notes. Does anyone else want to be in my group? But you can also sometimes
Nikki Kinzer
right
Pete Wright
...
Daniela Karidi
literally put a piece of paper, pass a piece, pass a note, like old fashioned piece of paper to someone sitting next to you saying, do you want to take notes together? Do you want to share this task?
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah, because honestly, like the social piece of it too can kind of come into this because I'm thinking of like when my daughter was in her psych class last year and it's this big, you know, auditorium, you tend to sit in the same spot every time. And then you tend to sit by the same people. And so she met someone, she met a friend just because they were sitting in the same spot all the time.
Daniela Karidi
proximity is the number one predictor for successful to making social networks. So, you know, if you're so we say to people that if you're not in the room, you're not going to learn the information. You're not going to be able to make that connection.
Daniela Karidi
So you won't be good at asking help. So coming to class, she came to class. She came consistently. So she increased her chance of making a relationship and learning information.
Nikki Kinzer
and they started like studying together because they're learning the same thing at the same time
Daniela Karidi
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer
and right yeah and the girl had ADHD as well it was a win-win
Pete Wright
That's outstanding. I feel like we could go a while longer, Daniela.
Nikki Kinzer
oh I know
Pete Wright
There's a lot in here and we barely touched on our notes, but you have been, as always, a fantastic resource, a real gift. Thank you for your time with us today.
Daniela Karidi
Thank you for inviting me.
Nikki Kinzer
yes
Pete Wright
We sure appreciate you.
Nikki Kinzer
So good.
Pete Wright
Thank you, everybody, for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate you, too. Thanks for your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we're going to head over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. Swipe up in your show notes. We're going to put all of the links to resources from Daniela so you can learn more about her and her work. And go do it. And then put it on a flashcard and spatially repeat it. And also probably write a play about it. Anyway, on behalf of Dr. Daniela Caridi and Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright. We'll see you next week right here on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
