Vegas!

One perk to living in Southern California is being a 4.5 hour road trip from Vegas. This past Thursday I got to attend the WEF/AWWA Young Professionals Summit that was held at the South Point Casino. It was a great opportunity to network and meet new people, both from my company as well as other consulting and public agencies all over the US and Canada. I decided to make the trip a mini-vacation and brought my friend Lori along, who also loves Vegas, for a little girls' weekend (er, Wed-Fri isn't exactly the weekend but you get the idea). We stayed at Red Rock which is my home away from home.

During the conference, there were several speakers who discussed leadership and issues facing the water industry. One of the most interesting speakers was from Dale Carnegie to discuss how to be a more effective leader. Right off the bat she asked if everyone knew that the brain creates memories in pictures not words. It makes sense because when you remember something, you generally visualize it and not just think of words in your mind. With that being said, she wanted to show us how we could use our brain to memorize something if you create an image. She said she was going to make a "stack" of 13 objects she wanted us to remember. It went like this:

Right here on the floor is a huge, hot pink Dell laptop with lots of software. Coming up through the center of the huge laptop is a giant No. 2 pencil the size of a telephone pole. Balancing on top of the pencil is a purple cow wearing a black jersey. Sitting on top of the cow is George Washington. George Washington looks a little disheveled and has a cut on his forehead. He has a band-aid over the cut to connect it together. On top of the band-aid is a huge mass of ice to help the swelling go down. On top of the ice is Marilyn Monroe who is ice skating while carrying a huge oceanliner under her arm that is headed south. Inside the oceanliner there is a swimming pool and inside the pool are two new hams. The new hams are leaking juice so they are wrapped with sheet music from "Take me back to old Virginny". The sheet music is held around the hams by the Empire State Building that is jammed through the hams. Now on top of the empire state building is another oceanliner that is headed north. At the front of the boat, a red hen is standing at the front like he is reinacting Titanic.

Okay, so after we went through all these items, she had us find a partner and repeat them all back forwards and backwards. She was demonstrating how making a mental picture could help you remember series of items.

She then asked for a volunteer to name all 13 original colonies in the order they joined the union. There was silence. Unbeknownst to us, this stacking exercise was a way to remember the 13 colonies.

1. Dell laptop with software = Delaware
2. No. 2 pencil = Pennsylvania
3. Cow wearing jersey = New Jersey
4. George Washington = Georgia
5. Cut on his forehead with band-aid = Connecticut
6. Mass of ice = Massachussetts
7. Marilyn Monroe = Maryland
8. Oceanliner headed south = South Carolina
9. New hams = New Hampshire
10. Sheet music "Take me back to old Virginny" = Virginia
11. Empire State Building = New York
12. Oceanliner headed north = North Carolina
13. Red hen = Rhode Island

Not that making crazy stacked images would help with all memorization, it was still pretty neat.