If you did a degree, how much can you remember??

[Timetheworldsaysicantafford]

I studied English Literature nearly twenty years ago and can hardly remember a thing (and have barely read a book cover to cover since!). Someone asked me my favourite author and I couldn't even think who it is really so just mumbled something about Jane Austen and Shakespeare. If you did a degree a while ago, can you actually remember much of what you learnt??

Undergrad broad themes and a lot from a module I loved.

Masters absolutely loads. I now work in that field though so I’d be worried if I didn’t

Vaguely. A question will come up on university challenge and I'll think 'I should have known that'. But then I didn't do much studying.

Hardly anything, I crammed for my exams and then instantly forgot it. I feel like I remember a bit more of GCSE and a levels as they did different projects and regular tests that built up knowledge gradually and consolidated it

Practically nothing I did excel as part of my degree and I cant do more than a simple sum now

Not a word...although it was a degree in computing science, earned before the internet was invented...

A fair amount but I work in the same area.

Almost nothing. Degree in psychology completed 16 years ago. Like a pp i always crammed for exams so retained fuck all information

Not much at all, English Literature too. Almost 40 years ago now

I still read a lot, but absolutely nothing that might be described as 'literature'. These days I read only what I like.

I did my first degree in literature too - god knows why! I still remember all manner of weird quotes etc

Yes I can, and I'm mid 50s.

I loved my degree, was passionately interested in the stuff I was doing and did huge amounts of reading around my subject. I still do a lot of reading about it. There is the odd module that I did that I wasn't particularly into, for eg I had to do a 'Film Studies' module on American Films for some reason (utterly unrelated in any way to my degree topic!) and I can still remember a fair bit about 'A Streetcar Named Desire' which I actually wrote about - even though I disliked the film and have never watched it since. Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh...

1st degree not much. 2nd degree was vocational and work in related job otherwise I’d forget that too. Absolute diabolical memory. Did an additional trading course prior to first lockdown but not had chance to implement it and don’t remember sod all.

Training not trading

Fuck all. History degree. Work in finance now.

Degree 20 years ago - snippets

Also English Lit! Also next to nothing!

Criminology degree, not much.

Nursing degree, quite a bit.

I loved my degree - broad social studies, so covered psychology, sociology, ethics, race, feminism, philosophy, etc. I remember the principles well. Not so much direct quotes

I remember more from my gcses than my degree (much more!!)

Haha I think this all the time! I graduated 15 years ago (English and History) and can barely remember a bloody thing. I somehow managed to get a First, but it appears my skill was rote learning and not actually digesting and retaining the knowledge I remember sweating blood and tears over my dissertation yet I can’t even remember what it covered aside from the bare bones!

Similarly, I couldn’t tell you the most basic shit about my A level topics, and despite French being one of my best GCSE subjects I’d struggle to hold a basic conversation in French these days (can you see a pattern here?!)

It’s actually rather depressing that a whole childhood / adolescence of learning amounts to very little retained academic knowledge in my case! But maybe it’s just me 🤔

On a slight tangent, I sometimes think much of the curriculum (at least back in the 90s) focused on the wrong thing. For example geography - endless learning about volcanoes and rocks (which you will generally never need to know about as an adult) but no teaching of the basic geography of the world.

Similarly back then there was no economics, politics or ‘life skills’ which would’ve been really bloody useful down the line! We didn’t even have proper sex education at my school, just a brief mention of anatomy and periods in Biology! Luckily the scope of subject options seems a lot wider these days ...

Sorry OP I got a bit carried away there with my angst over my mis-spent education 😂

english lit some of it but i remember that analysing books spoilt pleasure reading for me for quite a time but have been a reader for most of my life so my degree was an extension of normal life to me history i learnt that if you remember the date, the people the location and the bias of what you are looking at history is easy

English Literature degree nearly 30 years ago (!). I remember more of my O and A levels but two books I read for my degree (or skimmed, due to time constraints, then reread properly some years later) have absolutely stayed with me. Much of it I've forgotten, sadly.

Loads, but I now teach my subject, so I'd be worried if I didn't! There are particular papers the details of which I’ve forgotten, though - my Oscan and Umbrian is now pretty rusty 😂

Only vague principles but not much of the detailed stuff and the bits I found hard going are pretty much gone. Chemistry 30 years ago. Something occasionally bubbles to the surface when I watch university challenge, though.

Quite a bit - I work in a related field so it's been good to apply parts of my degree. As for some of the modules I studied, I remember very little as I've never needed them.

Maths and Philosophy

Fuck all.