Building Memory: Learning to Work With My Misfiring Brain

Finding a way back to learning

After I was a passenger in a car that was hit in 1995, I had to leave my on-campus undergraduate programme. The filter between my eyes and my mouth seemed to disappear overnight. I would read billboards out loud or blurt out pieces of lecture notes before I realized I was doing it.

I was exhausted, disruptive, in pain, and struggling with balance, focus, and making sense of what I heard. For more than a decade, I made several attempts to return to a classroom-based environment. None of them went well.

It was not until I discovered online learning that I found my way back. I could work from home, move at my own pace, and read material as many times as my brain needed. I began relying on recorded lectures, transcripts, and slide decks. Eventually, those systems helped me complete a Master of Education.

At the time, though, I did not tell anyone about my brain injury. I did not disclose to peers or professors. I was trying very hard to be seen as a competent, normal student. Looking back, I can see how much work went into maintaining that mask.

A different kind of return

That carefully reconstructed version of me did not survive a second motor vehicle accident in September 2019. Once again, I had acquired a brain injury.

I did not drop out. Instead, I started looking for research on how other people with acquired brain injuries managed online coursework. I found very little about the experience from the perspective of online learners themselves. That gap became part of the reason I began my doctoral research.

My brain had added some new and unhelpful features. Thoughts would disappear into what I came to call cognitive black holes. I could lose words, forget why I had opened a document, or find that a process I had used many times no longer stayed in my memory.

To continue, I needed a way to work around the gap between what I knew I could do and what I could reliably remember from one day to the next.

Building an external memory

From 2020 through 2024, I kept a handwritten research journal. It began as an occupational therapy exercise. My handwriting and fine motor skills had been affected by the injury, and I needed to practise concentration, recall, and time management.

It quickly became more than a journal. It became an external, retrievable memory bank.

My journal was not a polished diary. It was a working record: research decisions, technical steps, questions to follow up, notes from meetings, and thoughts that might otherwise disappear before I could do anything with them.

It helped in three practical ways:

• It let me return to the reasoning behind research and design decisions when I felt stuck or confused.
• It acted as a job aid, giving me a route back into technical processes I had forgotten between stages of the work.
• It captured small observations, feedback, and half-formed ideas that could later reconnect me with a larger question or finding.

In project-management terms, it became a job aid. When I could not trust my mind to hold the why or how of a task, I could trust the process I had documented.

The journal also helped me track what disability scholars sometimes call the crip tax: the extra financial, physical, cognitive, and temporal costs of existing in a world built around non-disabled bodies and minds (Blanchard, 2020; Katzman et al., 2024).

Leaving the mask behind

For years, I treated concealment as part of being a successful student. I thought that if I could look competent enough, nobody would notice what it cost to keep up.

After my second injury, that approach stopped being sustainable. The work of hiding became another barrier. I began to understand that asking for recordings, transcripts, extra processing time, or patience was not an admission of failure. It was part of building the conditions I needed to participate.

The journal helped with that shift. It gave me evidence that I was not imagining the challenges or simply failing to try hard enough. It showed me the work I was doing to adapt, recover, and continue.

Past me and current me

Familiar technology became another kind of support. I used Microsoft Excel to organize literature and research data because I had already been using it for more than 25 years. It was not the newest or most exciting option. It was the one I knew.

That mattered. New software does not always stick in my memory as easily as it once did. Learning it can use up energy I need for the work itself. While I can certainly learn new software, sometimes I need to balance how I choose to focus my energy. Using a familiar tool meant that past me could help current me.

Familiarity was an accessibility feature. I did not need the most sophisticated tool available. I needed one I could use reliably when cognitive capacity was limited.

That experience was not unique to me. Participants in my research also described how software changes, unfamiliar systems, and technology choices could create additional barriers to online learning (Semper, 2025).

I used to think that needing notes, recordings, systems, and reminders meant I was less capable. Now I see them differently. They are tools that let me do good work.

The real problem is not that some people need support. The problem is when learning and work are designed as if nobody does.