What Sticks?

I was actually around several other people when I began reading “What Sticks”. After reading the introduction about the man and the kidney thieves, I made a disgusted sound and read it aloud. I got the same “wow” that I had given myself, and then I continued on with my day. That was two weeks ago. Today I reopened the article and finished reading it. I didn’t even have to reread that first page, as I remembered it almost exactly. It was, in fact, a story that stuck. That began my interest in reading the rest of the chapter.


How is it that two weeks after reading that story had it stuck with me? I was curious to know because I sometimes have a difficult time remembering things I have read. Maybe this article really held some merit. Those were my beginning thoughts. As I continued reading, I came across other stories that would hold my interest. The popcorn story and the Halloween story kept with me throughout the article. After I completed the reading I sat back and thought for a moment. I actually still have a vision of the razor blade in the apple and a Big Mac and fries in a popcorn bag. That is how I determined what gave this article its merit.

People look for emotion while they are reading or listening to something. They are looking for purpose to continue using their time and energy. This article showed how putting visuals to something people care about make it stick. It puts meaning into what you hear. If I were to read an article about the nation’s economy and it gave me all sorts of big numbers that really meant nothing to me, I would have no greater understanding of the issue at hand than I had before I read it. However, if I had concrete evidence, or a visual, to show me what the downfall in the economy really looked like and how it directly affected me, I might remember it more. It would have more meaning to my life. Reading “What Sticks” made this clear to me.

The “tapping and listening” activity that the article talked about interested me very much. It suggested that one person tap out a common song, such as “Happy Birthday” or “The Star Spangled Banner”, while the listener tried to determine what song the tapper was tapping. The listener did not have a very high success rate. This was because the tapper was able to play the beat of the song in their head while tapping. They already knew what the song was. However, the listener did not have the knowledge that the tapper had and could not play the tune in their head. Instead they were hearing what sounded like morse code. The truth becomes that the tapper has the advantage of already knowing what they are going to tap, and the listener knows nothing.

I use this in the sense of teaching. The teacher has the advantage of already knowing the information that they are going to teach. The student most likely has either limited or no knowledge of the topic. The teacher has to draw to the student’s emotion and connect it with them to make it stick. A person cannot erase what they have already learned. Therefore, the teacher often has difficulty remembering that the students do not know what they know. It is the teacher’s job to make it memorable and make it “stick”.

After reading the introduction to this book, I am interested in reading the whole thing. The theories of what the book wants to send to its’ readers seemed to work with me on just the introduction. I would like to see all the ideas the book has to teach someone how to do the same. I want to find and implement ways to make what I tell my students “stick”.