Most of us never got taught how to study. We just got told to do it.

Chase DiMarco came on to fix that. His first question isn't "what should you study" - it's whether your current method actually works, or whether you've just been doing it long enough that it feels normal. Rereading your notes feels productive. It mostly isn't.

We go through visual mnemonics, the PEG system for memorizing lists in order, and his 11311 method for spacing out review so material actually sticks instead of evaporating after the exam.

This is worth working on before PA school, not during. Didactic year is the wrong time to discover your study method doesn't scale.

What we talk about:

• Auditing your own study habits honestly
• Why rereading feels productive and isn't
• Visual mnemonics and how to build them
• The PEG system for ordered lists
• The 11311 method and spaced repetition
• Getting your system working before PA school starts

Resources:

CASPA GPA calculator: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-school-caspa-gpa-calculator

Free application timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

Pre-PA counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Mentioned in this episode:

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Today's episode is a little different, but I'm interviewing a study expert.

Chase DiMarco is sharing tips on how to learn to study.

It's going to be good.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club Podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

Hey, guys.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club podcast.

I am excited for today's episode because it's a little bit different, but we'll talk about that in just a second.

And I just want to thank you for listening.

If you've been following along, I hope that you find this podcast helpful and I would love to get just your feedback.

If you have that, write a review, send me a message.

I love to hear from you.

So if we've never met before, I'm Savannah.

I'm a dermatology pa, I'm a mom, and I'm also the creator of the PA platform, which led to this podcast.

So that's a website, It's a blog.

Make sure you're on our newsletter.

If you've never joined, there's a bunch of links in the description that can help point you in the right direction.

But we're always here to answer questions as well.

So before we jump into today's episode and I'll let technically Dr. DeMarco introduce himself, but he'll talk to you about and I say it in the interview, but I've never actually evaluated my study skills the way that we talk about doing it.

So if you're struggling, whether in undergrad, PA school, graduate level stuff, I think this is a very helpful episode just to do a little self reflection with and figure out maybe some ways that you could be studying more efficiently and more effectively with less stress.

But we'll get to that in just a second.

Before we do, I wanted to mention the sponsors of our podcast.

MyPA resource is the first one and it is a personal statement editing service.

So check out my PA Resource who only uses PAS to edit and you can use the code futurepa there for a discount.

And then also I want to mention PA School Prep and that is an online course.

So if you go to paschoolprep.com you can read all about it, but it talks about how you can study up on your med terms, anatomy and physiology, and get kind of taken through these subjects with people who know about them and how important they are for PA school.

And you can use the code futurepa for a discount on those websites and on all of those services as well as on the PA platform.

All right, let's get into hearing from Chase DiMarco.

Well, my name is Chase DiMarco and I am an MS, MBA, currently, MD, PhD candidate.

I know it's a lot of letters after my name, but always working on some sort of educational enlightenment and that's kind of how I got into, well, everything I guess we're going to talk about today, which is mostly the medical Nemesis podcast that I host.

And hopefully a lot of the material there your audience will also find very useful because it's not just for medical students such as myself and my classmates, but really for anyone in healthcare, anyone in graduate level education, anyone that has a lot of information to remember can really benefit from some of these study techniques and mnemonic devices.

Okay, cool.

So you tell me just a little bit about your, like, educational path because yeah, that is a lot of letters.

It is.

All right, so I don't want to spend the whole time on this.

I'll try to sum it up a little.

I received my Master's in Educational psychology, graduated with that my first semester in medical school.

Actually I was kind of doing my online courses there as I was going to medical school and hoping to actually use that degree to get maybe an online teaching degree and pay some of my or online teaching occupation and pay some of my tuition off as I was going to school.

Didn't really work that way.

There's.

There's a lot of competition for those types of jobs.

So I continued on with my PhD courses as I was still going to medical school and still currently working on both of those.

I have taken a few breaks in between to explore other avenues.

And I recently received my MBA since I've been doing a lot of things in medical education and entrepreneurship lately.

So I figured maybe that would at least help me understand the stuff a little bit better and be able to work more efficiently within the medical education and content related spaces.

Okay, cool.

So a lot of education stuff.

So where, where did that interest originally come from when it comes to study techniques?

Was that more of a personal thing or seeing others struggle?

Well, I guess it's a combination.

So it's a mixture of personal struggle and sort of the educational environment.

I was in the middle of so my first semester at medical school, I was really just not appreciating the way things were set up.

And I decided to start a website at the time, which was freemed.org and it was kind of just a compilation of free materials out there.

It's why I called it Free Med Ed.

So free medical education.

And I would take online quizzes and YouTube videos and everything that other people had put up there, free content had put up there and just condensed it and organized it to basically follow the class format that my school is having, so myself or fellow students could go there and use these resources to supplement or to replace the resources they were using in school.

So from there I started realizing that especially after the second year where basic sciences were done.

The first two years of medical school are generally basic sciences, the second to clinical.

A lot of that's changing now, but traditionally that's how it goes.

And after the basic sciences, you start taking your board exams.

And I was really struggling and realized that despite all of this educational background, with my ed, psych degree and all the other avenues I've taken with education experiences, other degrees, I still was really, really struggling just with the quantity of.

Of material.

And I find this is not uncommon.

There's plenty of stories out there, people that, you know, breeze through it and they got a 290 or some ridiculously high number.

I don't even know if that's possible on their board exams.

And that was not me, and it was not a lot of the people that I knew.

So I started researching what other techniques are not really being taught in class.

What can I add to my own studies schedule to really supplement the education, but also to maybe give me a leg up on certain tasks?

It was around this time that I was also diagnosed with dyslexia.

So kind of an odd age to run into that.

But I just was struggling so much with certain aspects of reading comprehension and memory that I wanted to go get checked out and see if there's anything more serious wrong.

And they gave me the diagnosis of that said, you know, you are going to struggle with certain materials, especially when it comes to reading materials, textbooks.

Well, that's a huge part of a lot of medical training or any healthcare education training.

So I had to find something else that was going to help.

And that's when I came across a book in the library when I was finishing up a study session on speed reading.

Okay.

And it was really interesting.

I kind of looked at it, glanced by it said, no, that's not a real thing.

Like well, might as well give it a try.

So picked up the book and started skimming through it and started doing some more research online, seeing what other classes and resources were available, and really just went down this rabbit hole for a couple weeks, finding different speed reading techniques, different mnemonic techniques, different training resources that are out there that a lot of people really praised.

And I started looking into some of the science of it and there's some aspects there's definitely not a lot of.

But the parts that I was finding that seemed to be fairly legitimate were sort of promising.

I figured it's worth a try, so I started experimenting with it a little bit.

And I said, well, there's no way that I'm going to have the time while still studying for my boards to implement all of this properly.

I need someone to tell me what to do.

I need some help.

I said, what is the best way to get a lot of help without spending a lot of money?

Well, I'm going to start a podcast.

Yeah.

So I just decided to start a show and have a lot of experts come on.

They might not give me their time for free if I was to approach them via email, but if they can come on and also promote their product a little bit, then it's a win win.

I get to ask them questions that I'm personally having trouble with, obstacles I've run into, obstacles that other students I've talked to have run into while also, you know, promoting their material and helping them out a bit.

So that's kind of how the Medical Nemesis podcast started.

Okay, cool.

So with the studying thing, I mean, so my husband is a physician, he just finished residency, so I kind of watched him go through things I was through, went through PA school at the same time we were in undergrad together and we studied completely differently.

And I don't know that it took me a very long time to figure out what works for me.

And even then I don't know that it was the best or most efficient way of studying.

So it sounds like a lot of your studying techniques and tips are kind of about the efficiency of studying.

When you're in these especially grad level programs where, I mean, you're getting thrown tons of material, tons of tests, really, really quickly.

Yeah, there is definitely a lot of material and depending on what it is, especially when you're getting into some of the healthcare things, they expect you to remember a lot of stuff that you might not ever run into again, but you still have to know it for the test.

And these techniques were initially supposed to Help kind of organize and synthesize the material in a new way in a way that was more visual for me because I struggle with text, I struggle with textbooks, with reading.

That is not my learning style.

And, you know, most people have heard of the Vark visual audio reading, kinesthetic learning style.

It's technically not a real thing.

It's kind of been disproven as a teaching method.

You should implement all of them in your studies.

But if I was to be closer to one, it would definitely be visual.

So learning some of these visual mnemonic techniques, which is kind of what speed reading led me into, is what really helps.

So a lot of students probably are aware of either Picmonic or Sketchy.

Yeah, some sort of.

Yeah.

And luckily I've had both of those guys on, well, multiple guys from those shows.

And also Osmosis is doing a lot of stuff in visual mnemonics.

I've had all of them on the show kind of explaining their different techniques for it.

And everyone has a different technique.

Every single person I interview has a different way they approach it.

And that's great.

And that gives students the experience from a multitude of different experts.

So there's not just one way to approach these.

If you're trying to make your own, there's many different ways and you just really have to play around with it for a while.

So that's why the visual aspect of these visual mnemonics really stood out to me and why I was trying to learn those skills.

Yeah, I've connected with some of the people with Pigmonic and Osmosis too, and those things weren't around when I was in school, but I find them very, very interesting because I concepts are extremely helpful.

And like playing around with some of the videos and getting to actually see everything put together, which is difficult when you're studying from a PowerPoint, is just.

I really think it's cool and something that would have been helpful to me.

So if someone is okay.

I think everyone has struggled with studying at some point.

Whether you are in a class with a teacher that you don't really groove with their learning style or their testing style or, you know, it's just material you haven't really been exposed to.

How can someone initially, you know, figure out what works best for them?

Are there tests or things they can do?

Well, when it comes to that, it is really tricky.

And everyone you talk to is going to say something different.

And unfortunately, to my knowledge, there's no validated test that's going to say what is the exact best method because there's just too many different methods depending on the type of material.

So my advice is generally to try a little bit of everything and also to try them in a few different scenarios.

Because what really didn't work over here might work really good over there.

So between the different, more accelerated learning techniques is kind of what I chunk speed reading and mnemonics into.

There are some really good evidence based methods of education.

And a lot of these I was lucky enough to have interviews on from such as the Learning Scientist group and they have a podcast that has a lot of this material.

So you can look there and look on my podcast.

But Dr. Megan Samaraqui was on an earlier episode of mine and a few other people that talk about the cognitive psychology of learning, which is a great supplement to this.

So you can use these different tools and techniques, but then you can actually add the evidence based science behind which ones you might want to do more often.

They don't necessarily apply to the accelerated learning techniques as much.

That is really to the best of my knowledge right now, personal preference and experimentation.

But when you're talking about like rehearsal practice, such as if you use flashcards, there is a lot of evidence behind rehearsal practice.

And not reviewing your notes over and over, that's not going to help you.

But if you have that recall practice where you have to, without much of a trigger, actually remember a term or a process or a mechanism of action that is going to stimulate the neurons a lot more.

Okay.

Basically that's just.

It's a simple way for me to space out the repetitions in a way that sort of works for me, that's easy to remember and anyone can edit this as they want.

But it's basically if you cover some material, let's say you just fin a study, lecture, a video, a chapter, take the key points there and within an hour go over it the first time, do your first repetition right then and there.

And this is not reviewing the chapter, this is not reviewing your notes.

This is to either write them down or make a flashcard or something that requires you to recall it, close your eyes and recall the information.

So within an hour, within one day, within three days, one week, one month.

Just because I find that skipping all the way from one day to one week, you might learn lose a lot in between.

And the forgetting curve which was an older study done by Ebbinghaus, actually showed you lose a lot within the first few hours and almost all of it within the first two to three days if you do not recall the information.

So that's where some of the evidence base can come into these study techniques as well.

Okay, so some of what I'm hearing is kind of got to try some different things, figure out what's going to work for you, and be adaptable to, you know, different situations and scenarios.

Do you feel like some of these methods, whether it be the accelerated study techniques, the speed reading, or the new mics, do you feel like there are some of those that can work for everyone?

Like, no matter who you are, if you kind of learn these methods in some form or fashion or scenario, you can put them into practice?

It's interesting.

I feel like we're talking about studying.

Studying, which I've never thought about before.

Yeah, it's like meta studying, right?

That's basically what a lot of this new cognitive psychology research is about.

It's about learning how we learn.

Instead of teaching someone, teach them how to learn.

And that's what I love about it, because it's not something that's really been emphasized in our undergrad or anything before.

And even during our healthcare studies, a lot of our teachers are not aware of the science behind some of this stuff.

So as far as something that's good for everyone with the accelerated learning techniques, I have not run across something that's good for everyone just because there are so many differences and how people learn and the quality of their learning.

I know some people that can seriously remember every single thing they've ever heard because they make visual stories in their mind immediately as they're going along.

These are super nemesis, in my opinion, and there are books about a few cases of this happening and sort of what.

A lot of the training we cover in the Medical Nemesis podcast are these types of things how to develop those skills.

But not everyone is as visual.

And in that case, maybe you're a better reader and speed reading is going to be better for you.

And of course, speed reading comes with its drawbacks, too.

You have to dedicate a certain amount of time to practice practice, or your comprehension is going to go down very quickly.

But with the right techniques, with the right practice, you can conquer that and actually increase your comprehension as you're increasing your reading speed.

When it comes to something that does work for everyone, it seems to be more of the rehearsal and recall practice.

They're called space repetition, recall rehearsal.

A bunch of different names for the same basic thing.

And that is really not a technique that you are training yourself to, like the accelerated learning techniques, but just how the memory seems to work.

So by stimulating that same bit of information over and over is going to make it stronger.

That's how neurons are wired.

That's how they strengthen.

So that part is definitely going to work for everyone.

The others, it really comes to you and how much time you dedicate to it and how creative you can be.

That's a huge part in accelerated learning seems to be creativity.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I think the issue that people struggle with as far as the rehearsal techniques in PA school is that they don't feel like they have time because, you know, we sit in class from 8 to 5 every day, and then you go home and you study and that's basically all you do.

But it's interesting.

So I feel like I'm like a worry studier or I was more so.

So in undergrad, and I've said this a bunch of times, I feel like I focus more on worrying about studying and stressing about actually studying than just doing it.

And so in turn, that just made me this little stress ball that would barely fly by or feel like I was just memorizing stuff and not actually learning it.

But that got somewhat better and I kind of found out what worked for me, especially with, you know, for me it's questions, like doing questions over and over.

But once I got to PA school, it was kind of like I had to learn how to study again and be really flexible while all this was being thrown at me at once.

So I'll just tell you my study method and you can tell me how effective or ineffective this sounds.

So I.

So in PA school, I was the study guide girl.

Like, I would make these study guides and so I would kind of take all the information that we received.

And I guess this may have been a form of recall or rehearsal, whether it was PowerPoints, books, study guides, whatever we already had.

And I kind of combined it into this usually somewhat visually appealing collection of information.

But I never actually studied my study guides, so I never went back and looked at them.

I would sometimes, you know, make some flashcards of the most important things, or what I would do is then I would take like a question book that had the answer with explanations, and then I would kind of apply it.

So it was like the act of making that study guide is what made things click for me.

And then I could take it and apply it, but it took me a little while to get there.

And figure out that that, for me, is what worked.

And I'm not a group studyer.

Like, I cannot sit there and talk to people about stuff that just.

That's not going to work for me.

Okay, so you do have some decent habits there, but everything can always be, you know, increased a little.

So let me give you a quick synopsis of how my study went so we can compare them.

So I didn't learn about a lot of these techniques until the end of my third year, so I was already done with the basic sciences.

I was done with my first board exam, I think my second one by the time I finished these and when I started actually learning these and implementing them.

So I didn't have the ability to do this from the beginning, and I really wish I did.

But creating your own material is a great first step.

So that does incorporate, as far as we understand, like, different parts of your brain.

You have the memory recall, plus you're either writing it down or typing it up.

Writing, for some reason, seems to be much stronger as a memory stimulant.

So people that write out their notes or draw out mind maps or something along those lines seem to remember stuff a little bit longer than people that type them up.

I'm guessing there's something there with kinesthetics and different parts of the mind working together.

Whereas you don't really have to do much when you're typing, but kind of unclear at this point, at least from what I know.

But that's where a lot of students stop.

And I kind of did the same thing.

I would write out my notes, I would color coordinate them, and then I would do a lot of passive learning, which I didn't really realize I was doing at the time.

And that includes watching lectures for a second or third time or listening to educational podcasts, which please do.

They're great.

I have one.

But you can't get all of your information just from listening to it.

You're going to have to do something else after that.

You're going to have to write down a summary in your own words or, you know, don't read, just show notes.

If you write down your own words, you're translating it, so your brain's really thinking about the material and how it correlates to your current body of knowledge.

So your summation is going to be different than someone else's.

But then you still have to implement that rehearsal, practice.

You need to be able to go over this material several times and without looking at it.

So if you create the notes, handwrite the Notes, that's a good first step.

Then if you review the notes by looking at them, you're basically not.

Not gaining much from it is what most of the science seems to show.

If, however, you write it out and then you set it aside, close your eyes, sit there for 30, 60 seconds, and try to recall every bit that you just wrote down and then just look at it for the bits that you missed.

That is much stronger then you're actually recalling from your memory as opposed to just visually looking over it again.

And then you can actually increase this by all the parts that you didn't remember the first.

Go make a flashcard on that and just add that to your deck that you're going to study later.

So it decreases the overall amount of material you need to put into your deck.

If you're using one, which I do recommend most people do, while also getting that first, you know, you just wrote it down.

So that's within the hour.

Now you just use a flashcard sometime tomorrow and then in a couple more days, and then week after that, etc.

So a lot of people do stop at the first step, if they even make it to the first step because of the time constraints.

And I understand, I did the same thing.

But you're so much better off to spend the time really getting the foundational knowledge as it's fresh in your brain and cementing it as well as you possibly can now, then trying to come back to it in a couple of days, weeks or months and not really having an idea of where to start off.

Okay, so that's interesting.

So maybe remember, like, one thing I realized I was doing while I was studying is I would.

And I guess I don't know if it would be supported to do this or not, but I would find myself studying the stuff that I knew that I felt confident with because it made me feel good.

Like, as I was going through, I was like, oh, I got this, I got this, I got this.

So in turn, I would put kind of aside or wouldn't single out the stuff that I was struggling with more.

And I just kept reviewing all of it.

So looking back, I think I probably should have been a little bit more confident in saying, like, all right, this knowledge is solidified.

I got this, I understand it, I'm good.

I need to focus on other stuff.

So I don't.

I feel like that was more of like a focus thing where I wasn't always looking at exactly what I should.

Have been Looking at this is very common.

I did the same thing.

Whether it be medical, Penn, nursing students, we all do it.

It's just human.

And there are different terminologies for basically the same concept.

Whether it be in economics or psychology or anything.

We avoid pain.

And when we don't know the material or we find it hard, we want to avoid that difficulty.

So we'll make it easier on ourselves.

Oh, I'm going to review everything.

Okay, I know 70% of that now.

I feel good about myself.

Opposed to focusing on that 30% that we didn't get at the time.

And really, really getting into that material and why we're not understanding it, trying to figure out how to understand it better.

And also that part is very time consuming.

So we're afraid to waste, quote, unquote, waste the time to find that material.

But you have to, if you don't do it now, well, your material is just going to stack up more and more.

Are you going to come back to it later?

Probably not.

Not in a significant amount.

So I do think that a lot of students put off now what they should be focusing on now.

And that's something that if anyone looks at Deliberate practice, it's actually a book by Anders Ericsson called Peak.

Had him on the show too, if anyone wants to check out that episode.

Deliberate Practice kind of focuses on this.

This is how you become a master at a certain topic or a certain skill set, is focusing on your weak points, seeking out help when you need it.

And we're probably going to need a lot early on and then really having a plan, a goal, setting all these things out so we know if we're achieving them or not, instead of just kind of in the back of our mind.

Yeah, I did okay today.

And then letting a lot of things slide.

Yeah.

And it takes some self reflection to realize that.

Like, I don't think in the moment of PA school I didn't realize that.

Like really, honestly just reflecting right now, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's what I did and that I could have probably not done that.

So for anyone out there who is in school, go ahead and take a moment and think about how you're studying so you don't make the mistakes I did.

Are there any specific methods or tips?

Let's talk first, like undergrad level, where to be honest, and I know it doesn't feel like this in the moment, but like you have the most time that you will ever have in your entire life, but what are some methods or tips for like the undergrad level courses that you would recommend or even resources.

I know your podcast is a great one.

Or specific books or anything that you feel like they should take the time to look into.

Well, that's a tricky one for me.

So I. I think this is also part of the reason why I struggled so much in medical school.

Actually not as much during medical school itself, but especially during the testing period is I was not used to that quantity and quality of information being thrown at me at one time.

Because during my undergrad I didn't really feel like I struggled that much.

I kind of slacked things off a bit.

And it's amazing how many of us in retrospect, admit that we do that.

Oh yeah, and if I had known what I was getting myself into now back then, I would have started learning some of these accelerated learning techniques.

Just play around with them, see which ones you like.

Because developing even one or two of them then will give you a foundation to build on later as opposed to trying to learn the techniques as you're trying to learn the most information you've ever had thrown at you.

So getting a head start on any of that would be great.

I would definitely recommend anything from the Learning Scientist podcast.

They have much more detailed and accurate information than what I'm portraying.

Even as far as the cognitive psychology of learning goes, there are a couple depending on if we're talking about learning in general or the accelerated learning type stuff.

There are some online courses that are really popular, such as Anthony Metivier's Magnetic Memory Method.

He has courses, podcasts, blog, a bunch of free information there.

If someone wants to get into the visuals and start talking about memory palaces, that's really his specialty.

He has a lot of unique ways of approaching it.

There's also Jonathan Levy's Become a Super Learner podcast and he has the Super Learner course.

He's going to be a guest in the next upcoming weeks.

I'm not sure when it'll be posted, but I'm excited about that because he has a very, very popular online course.

Really, if you kind of sort through my podcast, I've tried to pick out a lot of resources that I found useful and ask them to come on the show.

So if they've been on the show, there's a good chance that a good majority anyway, maybe 80ish percent that I really spent a lot of time going through all of their materials beforehand if I could, if I had time to, and and then ask them to come on the show.

Don't have time for everyone.

Obviously limited time with everything else going on.

But it's a good place to just kind of get a references list, maybe.

Okay, well, yeah, we can definitely point people in the right direction as far as the accelerated learning.

Like, let, like, just.

Can you give us an example?

Like, let's say you were in a course, like a Clin Med section or something, about to take a test.

Like, what would that look like just for you, if you're trying to take in a lot of information at once,.

Sure.

So what I generally like to start people off with, if they've never heard about any of the mnemonic techniques before, is the PEG system.

And this is one memory tool used for memorizing short strings of numbers.

And it might not always apply to healthcare students and medical students being the most useful type of system because you don't generally have to remember a lot of numbers.

But I feel this is the easiest one to start off with to develop your own creativity.

So that's why I recommend it first.

And basically what the peg system is is translating the numbers 1 through 10 or 0 through 9, depending on how you want to set it up.

Completely up to you with an object.

And there's generally three categories, and that's rhyming it with the number, finding a similar shape to the number, or associating the number with something else, which is sometimes said as sounds like, looks like, seems like.

So let me give an example of this.

In the PIC system that I use sometimes, and sometimes I do switch these out.

But one through ten, I have one for rhyme, I have gun for looks like, or the shape pen or a pencil.

And then association, I'll use a snowboard because singular one being singular to me.

So if I want to create a story that has one in it, I can use any of these objects.

Now, I don't want to go through the whole list of them here because that'll just take too much time.

And I do believe I did so on one of my past podcast episodes about the pig system.

So you can search that out if you want.

The whole system that I created, and everyone creates this their own, they make different associations and different visuals to go along with the numbers.

But let's say I wanted to remember the string 1, 4, 5, 7, 8.

I'm just making it in order for easy so I could have my rhyme, which is one for gun.

Five, I like the shape one, which is generally a hook or a hanger, because it kind of looks like the tail of the five.

Oh, wait, what did I say?

One, four, five, seven, one, four, Five, seven, Obviously, I need to practice.

I should have actually looked at that before saying it.

So four, the rhyme is a door.

Actually, for this one, let's use the association.

So it seems like four car tires, and then five is the hook.

And seven is kind of a tricky one.

But I usually use the shape of a hockey stick, because a seven kind of looks like a hockey stick.

So now we have four objects here that we can use to create a little journey.

So it's called the journey method sometimes, too, if you do them in a certain order.

So let's say we have the gun is shooting through a door.

Then you open the door, and there's a pirate there with a hook.

He's jabbing the hook at you.

And for some reason, in his other hand, he's holding a hockey stick.

This is a very simplistic visual.

But then it's very easy to potentially use something like this for long, long strings of numbers and creating a short story that's very ridiculous but very visual to you.

And that's the thing.

You're supposed to make it ridiculous.

It's supposed to be something that is independent to you.

So you remember, whatever comes to your mind first is what you go with.

So mine might sound really, really stupid to anyone listening, but find out when you create your own, they might be just as ridiculous.

And that's great.

That's perfect.

Some people find that more violent or graphic imagery is much easier to remember.

And there's definitely reasons for that.

Don't be afraid to do that.

You just might not want to share them with your friends.

But this is an example of one of the simplest mnemonic devices that you can use to remember something.

By making these visual associations, then we can get into a whole bunch of different, more complex methods.

And we.

We then put our visuals into what we call memory palaces, which is basically any room or outdoor environment that you can visualize in your mind in great detail.

You put these in different places in a certain order.

So it's kind of.

Kind of like different stations in an order within the house or within the bike path that you usually ride or run or something like that.

And then it allows you to create these visual associations you can use to recall later on.

So I can't remember, let's say, some aspect of a particular bacteria that I just learned in microbiology.

I can think back in my visual palace to what weird graphic I placed in that location for that bacteria.

Like, oh, okay, now I can associate it back to the actual topic.

So it's just a really interesting way to remember something visually.

And we remember visual objects much, much, much greater than we do with text based objects.

So a lot of visual stuff, a lot of association.

And I'm assuming as you do this more, it just kind of gets easier and becomes something that you practice, essentially.

Is that correct?

Yeah, to a degree.

So it is also kind of associated with the topics you're used to associating with.

What I attribute it to is you're creating a visual dictionary.

So when you're using the PEG system, for instance, you have three different visuals.

Generally the sounds like, looks like, or seems like for each number of 1 through 10.

So that's only 30 different visuals that you're attaching to your visual dictionary.

That's 30 for 10 numbers, which seems like a bit much if you just had to remember 10 numbers.

But if you had to remember a long string of 30, 40 numbers, you're probably not going to be able to remember them without a visual cartoon or some sort of graphic going on in your head, making this association to the next one and that object associates to the next one and making the story.

But when you're talking about subjects, it can get a lot more complicated because you have to learn a different kind of foundation for each subject.

But once you have that foundation done, once you've created a couple for microbiology, a couple for calculus, a couple for anatomy, then it becomes easier.

So I find that it can spread out from the topic and become easier, but you still might have to kind of start from scratch every new topic.

Just because medicine and healthcare in general are so unique, we don't have a lot of normal associations that we, you know, could use easily.

Very true.

Well, I feel like I need to go listen to more learning podcasts now, but where can people just kind of follow you or find more information if they have questions or want to learn more about this?

Sure.

Well, obviously the Medical Numbness podcast.

I highly recommend anyone go through there.

And if you don't want to subscribe, at least go through and pick a few titles that sound interesting.

Try two or three.

If you like it, subscribe, Download the older episodes.

There's a lot of evergreen material in there, so it's always useful.

It doesn't matter when it was recorded.

You can also find us on Twitter at mednemonist.

We have, if you prefer email, Medical mnemonistmail.

We have a Facebook page, Facebook group, Medical Nemesis Mastermind.

So there's a lot of places on social media you can find us.

And all the medical nemesis stuff is under the initial website that I mentioned, freemed.org so you can also find information there.

I have a blog there.

I have a book that just came out that's on there.

A new podcast that just started, the One Minute Preceptor Podcast.

So a lot of information on that website.

If you can't find anything on social media or if you're looking for specific information, but we're pretty much everywhere, well,.

We can certainly link to all of that, make it easy for everybody.

And then one more thing, if you don't mind.

Hopefully we're a couple months behind currently on this app that I'm also creating right now, but hopefully it'll be out in the next few months, at least.

The beta version will be.

Take a few months to work out all the kinks, but it's called Find a Rotation.

So if they go to findarotation.com right now, it may or may not be up, but save it for later.

And it's a great resource that we are going to provide a platform, kind of like Airbnb, for your clinical rotations.

So if anyone is looking for clinical rotations and can't find them, as this network develops and as we add more preceptors there, it'll give students more options in more locations.

Cool.

Sounds helpful.

Well, that should be awesome.

And yeah, thanks so much.

No, thank you.

All right, y', all, so definitely go check out some of Chase's resources.

And.

And yeah, I think it's very interesting to actually think about how we study.

But if you have any questions, send them my way, send them Chase's way, and then I'll see you guys next week.

Bye.