“I performed best when I was reading the textbook, while typing its text into a wordprocessor, while listening to music, and (peripherally) watching milkdrop on another monitor. This was creating other domains of memory, that were linked to the unique stimuli that were simultaneously associated with the material I was ‘reading’ – but I wasn’t merely reading, and I couldn’t remember the things I merely read — I needed the multiple inputs at the same time in order to anchor the otherwise boring texts in memory.

This allowed me to record the texts in my mind nearly photographically, which was what was required to pass the tests.

The authorities didn’t want a better answer; and I could almost always produce a better answer… they wanted you to re-iterate what was in the textbooks.

So that’s how I learned to do that. When they stopped me from using my own OS and listening to music at the same time, I was so bored I couldn’t absorb the material.”

— an anonymous informant (WS)