The Portfolio is where you actually learn. It is the foundation of this entire unit. The science behind this is as follows. Creating a personal summary is to request your brain’s neurons to essentially fire connectivity and activate over new information. When listening alone, passive information comes in and will reinforce or relate to existing information in your brain, but won’t form new memories on its own. Basically, your brain says “oh yes, this information relates to what I already know about ABC, so XYZ is important”, and the new information is never “saved” into your memory. Passive listening only reinforces existing knowledge. By pressuring your mind to “create” something (e.g. written summaries), this process pressures your mind to create and use new pathways in your brain related to the new information, thus encouraging them to be permanent. This is the simplest way to get the information into our brains and have it stay there. So, this exercise is for you. For many topics, you’ll find you’ll remember the topic for the entire trimester without having to revisit your notes.