By Kristin Backert

Readers, I have somehow (somehow) picked up yet another hobby. Recently, one of my friends introduced me to the Digimon trading card game. The first time that I went through some cards, I felt incredibly overwhelmed. What was the difference between “on play” and “your turn”? Why did creatures with the same name have different effects when played? How did people keep track of everything?!

Soon after, I went to my friend’s house to get a crash course in playing. He was very patient with me (I stared at cards for ages as I tried to figure out what to do) and answered all of my questions as I hesitantly put down cards. I actually won a game, but it felt like a massive fluke because I played cards that I maaaaaybe semi-understood and probably won with dumb luck. When I went home that night, I considered my options. I could toss the cards out the window and give up. That would be pretty easy and possibly fun in its own littering way. Or I could study how the game worked and memorize what the cards said so that I could make quicker calls about what to play. That would involve a lot of perseverance, bloodshed (maybe), and frustration, so that didn’t sound too great.

In the end, I opted to study the game and memorize the cards. To make things easier for myself, I chose the rookie cards to learn first, as there were only four of them. I read a card, said its effects out loud, and then moved to the next card. I repeated those steps and then returned to the first card to see what I could recall. From there, I’d go back to the second card. If I successfully recalled the info on both cards, I then added a third card. This is actually the same type of memorization strategy that I share with my students. Trying to memorize 30 Spanish words or 45 History terms at once can be daunting and unrealistic. Breaking them up into smaller chunks makes things a lot easier on your brain, and that constant repetition can make it easier to remember material.

As I worked to memorize the cards, I also focused on little visual cues to help me recall differences between the cards. In Digimon, the same creature can appear on different cards with different effects. For example, I had three different Terriermons in my deck with different effects, so I designated them in my head as Cheeseburger Terriermon, Terriermon Assistant (already his name!), and Waving Terriermon. As I continued to add cards to my hand to memorize, I kept adding visual cues when necessary.

But straight-up memorization can only take you so far. Memorization can get the info in your head, but you need to grasp the bigger picture if you want to be able to talk about it with confidence. So while memorizing info on my cards, I realized that there were some wordings that confused me and that I didn’t actually understand what an effect did. Whenever that happened, I sent a picture of the card to my friend with my interpretation of it to see if I was correct. And most importantly, I practiced playing. Yes, I knew the info, but until I actually sat down and played, I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. Pairing the words that I had memorized with the actions necessary to play the cards helped to bridge a lot of gaps in my understanding.

Am I a Digimon champ now? Ahahaha…no. And that’s okay! I’m still learning in the way that makes sense to me, and it’ll take some time. One big thing that this card experience has reminded me of is that you can memorize a math formula, but you need to practice solving problems to really see how well you understand it. You can memorize a bunch of Spanish vocab terms, but you need to practice writing or speaking to see how they’re meant to be used. Memorization is a great and useful tool, and it’s made even more powerful when you combine it with other tools. Stay tuned to see what hobby I pick up next!