Any tips for people with bad memories?

[Untraditional]

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Anyone got some tips for people who struggle with recall for factoids? I seem to have real problems it and can predict its only going to get worse in courses like path and pharm.

In neuro this was absolutely my bane. We had a whole lecture on motor diseases and I ended up blowing it in spite of the many hours I spent trying to memorize. Anyone in a similar spot who wants to share their techniques?

 

[CaptainSSO]

Mnemonics, maybe? Or try associating the things you're studying with something else--for instance, learning glucose metabolism, associate the different steps with a football game: quarterback passes to the running back for glycolysis (short play), or passes to the wide receiver for oxidative phosphorylation, the long play (bad example, I know, but hopefully you get the idea). Little things like that--for instance, I differentiate purines/pyrimidines by thinking purines = bigger molecule (shorter name), and pyrmidines are smaller (longer name). Then All Girls are Pure. Adenine, guanine, are purines. Then fill in the rest: thymine, uracil, and cytosine, are pyrimidines, by default. Sometimes I repeat a word hundreds of times in my head to make it permanently stick: for instance, glomerulus, I had to repeat that over and over in my head before I could remember it (otherwise, I might remember it slightly off: glomulus, glomorolus, etc.). Other than that, I don't know--find what works for you. I found that if I read text slowly and steadily, it sticks better.

Hope this helped somewhat. Good luck.

Edit: Another tip: switch up your study spots! Seriously, this has been proven to work. For instance, study some in the library, some at home, some at Starbucks, etc. Apparently your brain associates the different sensory inputs you get in the different environments with what you're learning at the time. Here's a link to the article.

In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

 

[deleted387928]

Try this:

After you've read the notes a few times and have a general idea of what's going on, make a skeleton of the notes that contains the facts that are the hardest to memorize and/or most important to memorize:

So as an example, I would spend 80% of the time trying to memorize just the following:

Myasthenia gravis = antibodies against ACh receptor, associated with thymic hyperplasia
Lambert eaton = decreased Ca2++ at presynaptic terminal, associated with small cell cancer
Epidural hematoma = blow to temporal head, rupture of middle meningeal artery, period of consciousness followed by sudden increase in pressure & death.

Once I felt absolutely solid on those facts, I would work in the less high yield details.


There's way too much information in a given lecture to memorize it all. You gotta figure out what's important and REALLY memorize that information. I think it's better to know less things but know them cold. It makes reviewing material less painful as well, because you know what you know. You're not constantly juggling & cramming information and having it fall out.

 

[rxlea]

What type of learner are you? Auditory? Kinesthetic? Visual? I am visual/kinesthetic so I write out the most important point(s) from the lecture notes. I tend to picture things from the slides and that helps.

 

[CaptainSSO]

What type of learner are you? Auditory? Kinesthetic? Visual? I am visual/kinesthetic so I write out the most important point(s) from the lecture notes. I tend to picture things from the slides and that helps.

There's actually not really any evidence for the whole learning style theory:

Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information. However, we found virtually no evidence for the interaction pattern mentioned above, which was judged to be a precondition for validating the educational applications of learning styles.

We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number.

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/9/3/105.abstract

Honestly, try switching up your environments when you study. I've found it has had a huge impact on my own capacity to memorize information, but give it a chance and try it for yourself.