Ever feel like the way you’re taught to remember a thing is harder than just remembering it?
That’s how I am with mnemonics. I know there are people who love them, but I hate them. I’d rather just remember the planets in order than memorize a saying I have trouble memorizing just to remember the first letter of each planet.
For me, it’s a lot of work for very little return. Sometimes key terms can be like that. Old timey descriptions of things that might not be that helpful now.
If you don’t know what the key word means in real life, it feels like learning a whole new language. Take sickle cell anemia for example. Do you even know what a sickle is or what it looks like?
A sickle is kind of like a big, long knife wrapped into a half a circle. It was used to cut through brush or tall weeds.
The cells in sickle cell anemia look like exactly like the blade of a sickle, but who the heck knows what a sickle is these days???
But here’s the point: Those key terms are there to help you draw a picture in your mind, so that you can remember. They aren’t there to replace the information that should be there.
If you knew (easy to look up) what a sickle is, it becomes very easy to remember the shape of those screwy RBCs. If you don’t know what a sickle is, then you’ve just got one more random word to memorize.
There’s a lot more to this than it would seem right off the bat. I can’t wait to show you. Join me and we’ll cover key terms in a way you’ve never seen before.
Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian Wallace
