Study Prof

No matter what you are memorizing, mnemonic strategies will make the process easier and less time consuming. It may take more time to memorize the info initially, but you will more than make up for it by having to do less review later on!

The mnemonic process may not be so obvious when you are trying to memorize visuals, so let’s try it with a very complex chart that someone in anatomy or pre-med might have to memorize.

Click for full-size image. Public Domain image from Wikimedia Commons

For highly visual material, I find it helpful to actual redraw the image. The drawing doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to accurately capture the information.

Don’t trace! The act of looking at the image and then redrawing it–correcting, erasing, redoing–will contribute to the stickiness of the memory. You aren’t wasting time! As I redraw I would also add in color, not to promote realism, but to bring out features.

Redrawing the image also forces you to pay attention to every detail. Notice my note in brackets on this picture; “Ask prof.” As I was drawing I noticed that the image was missing a label.

Next, I imagine myself, ant-sized, walking along the bone, up the tendon (I didn’t label those because I already knew them) and onto the epimysium. At my feet are lots of little mice running around going “eep, eep,” (EEP – MICE = epimysium). I’m trying to avoid stepping on them.

I come to the edge and look over onto the cut away section. Between the outer layer and inner layer I see little periscopes peering up at me. I pull one of the periscopes out and there is a mouse holding on to it, looking at me (PERISCOPE – MICE = perimysium). Over to the side of each one of those muscle-fiber bundles, I notice a blood vessel with blood slowly dripping out. I take care to look at each blood vessel, clearly seeing it in my mind’s eye.

That long bundle sticking out of the center has human faces frozen onto it’s sides (FROZEN – FACES = fascicle).

And that thin piece sticking out of the end of the fascicle? I can see it flex and contract so it’s a muscle, but it has a bowl of sticks-n-twigs fiber cereal balanced on top of it, threatening to fall with every flex. (MUSCLE – FIBER CEREAL = muscle fiber).

I would then do each part of the chart in the same manner. As I zoom in to the details of the muscle fiber, I’ll shrink myself even smaller so I can easily see the details.

How would you quickly review this information? How can it be made easily portable? How do you make sure you still recall it accurately in several weeks? Please log in or sign up to read the rest of this content. Find out more.

Please let me know in the comments if you have your own specialized information you are trying to memorize and can’t quite figure out how to do it. There is always a way to make a quick, easy, reliable, memory with mnemonics.

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