Memory palace
If we stick with the memory palace and the methods I have presented, we can improve a lot in learning when we do not have to use logic, but rather “upload” data into our heads. The memory palace consists of places and images. Places are locations (=loci) that we know, which we visit in our minds, we are planning a trip in them, and mentally place our images on the various landmarks. The images carry the information that we want to remember, while the places are the warehouse in our minds. Don’t be afraid because it is not that complicated to use. At the beginning, I felt that it would not work for me, because I could not imagine, for example, my own home well, I saw it all very vaguely. Don’t give up at that point, I don’t remember exactly, but in a few days, 1-2 weeks I got used to it enough to be able to use it, and a person continues to develop afterwards. Before, I couldn't really mentally visit familiar locations, but since then I've changed with practice, and I know it now. It's easy to read about the memory palace on the internet, and I recommend reading Joshua Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein, he also writes about how the memory palace works in a separate chapter. I'll write a short list as an example, because the best way to understand the technique is to try it. The list: screw, coin, tomato, cap, etc. You can memorize long lists with it, but I'll only show you this for now. In the first location, imagine screwing several screws into the given object, which causes it to crack. In the second location, imagine a large pile of coins, imagine grabbing them, lifting them up and scattering them, feeling them with your hands, hearing their ringing. In the next location, imagine cutting a large tomato and squeezing the seeds onto the given object. Or throw tomatoes at it. Try to taste it in your mind to feel its taste. In the next location, imagine your own hat, which you put on the given object, or put smaller objects in it. Feel what the hat feels like. Try to place the other pictures you want to remember in a similar way. The pictures you place should be unusual, funny, or unique in some way, something you haven't seen before, because such pictures are remembered better than ordinary things you see in everyday life. The best memory palaces for me were familiar houses and buildings, I think because they are not as big as a street compared to us, so they work much better. But any other building, park, city district, street can be a memory palace. To start, I recommend familiar houses using as memory palaces. A memory palace is also suitable for organizing information; we can use individual buildings and their rooms to separate information. For example, when we are moving through a palace with, say, astroviruses, and it has taken over the kitchen and half of the bathroom, I don't continue with caliciviruses in the bathroom, but jump to the next room, the living room. This way, the two topics are better separated in my mind, and my knowledge will be better. (e.g. astroviruses: kitchen + half of the bathroom, caliciviruses: living room + dining room) Unfortunately, this would have been considered a luxury when studying for the exam, because this way I would run out of loci in my palaces sooner, and I wouldn't have enough palaces if I did this. Instead, I moved along a line continuously along the wall from room to room, and I didn't leave a single locus empty.
In my palaces, when memorizing, I always placed my images either from the left or from the right. For example, in one house, I always mentally moved from the right, and my first locus was the entrance gate, the second was the flower garden to the right, 3. the window of the house to the right, 4. the back entrance door of the house, and as I reached the house and went inside, I always walked along the wall, and I always packed the mental images into the locations (loci) towards my right hand. I suggest that the reader also develop a similar system. Let's try to place the images into the individual locations (loci) of the palace. I'm including a schematic drawing of this palace of mine here, and how I walked in it. This kind of route in the palace is good for learning long sequences, and I think it's also good for making the most of the storage space in my palaces, which was a must when studying for exams.
This way I made the most of the loci of my palaces, but I couldn't mentally separate the individual diseases that well, they could get mixed up in my head, and I could only access the information if I went back to the beginning of the memory palace section about the given disease, and I retraced the palace until the end of the palace section, recalling the images placed there. So if we want real knowledge, we use the rooms and walls as partitions that separate the information. However, for a big exam, it is more useful if we don't deal with the rooms and "walk" along the wall and go through the entire building, so the rooms don't separate the individual topics.
There were times when the notes were fluctuating between topics, and I didn't collect all the information that needed to be learned, e.g. about astroviruses, place it along a path, and then do the same with e.g. calici viruses. This was when I was learning from a series of questions, and the questions were jumbled up, not in order. In that case, you can't just start a palace for astroviruses, because then you'll come across some inappropriate information about, say, caliciviruses, and other viruses. You can also do something like this by assigning a palace for astroviruses in advance and another for caliciviruses, and as I read one piece of information, I immediately place it in the appropriate palace, thus saving the time that I would have spent arranging the study material in order. However, this can only be done if it's a small exam, because this technique is very wasteful with palaces and loci. When studying for a major exam, first line up the information and only then place it in the palaces, otherwise you won't have enough palaces. Don't place multiple images that you want to memorize on the same background. For example, a blue sofa that is uniform, with no separate objects on it, is then a single locus, two different pieces of information cannot fit on it. Two unrelated images cannot fit on it. If you place more than one, you can easily forget one of them. However, you can safely put one image group: eg. surfboard, with Amanda sitting on it, ink drips onto Amanda from the ceiling. In the palace, you can go there and back along the imaginary route, so you can even recall the information in reverse order. It is recommended to involve not only our vision, but also our other senses in the palace, e.g. taste and touch, in order to get more memorable images. You can improve a lot with the memory palace if you have to recall a lot of information. It is much more effective than repetition and questioning. The images placed in the memory palace should not just be placed there, but should interact with their environment, e.g. squeeze the tomato on it, screw in the screw, etc.
So when I was studying for an exam, along a line, either on the right or on the left, I always walked along the wall or fence in my mind, without wasting any locuses, and since there was a lot of study material, I looked at my palace in very high resolution, I attached a mental image to every small object, e.g. in the flower garden, the bushes, flowers, a rain gutter, a familiar brick, etc., so I went into such details so that more information could fit in my palaces.
If some information needs to be denied, e.g. there is no inflammation, then several tricks can be used, e.g.: reversing the image, i.e. an image hanging upside down from the ceiling. Or it is possible to transform the word no or the word not with memoria sillabarum , and place it in the palace next to the other image, e.g. no = noodle, not=notebook. However, let's be careful, because the latter example can already give false knowledge.
Before studying with palaces, of course, I had to collect palaces. I was able to acquire my memory palaces by actually physically going and revisiting as many houses, cities, streets, and parks as possible where I had spent a lot of time at some point in my life. I was also surprised by how quickly the landmarks that I had seen many times before came back to my mind. 1-2 times in a given city, or let's say 1-1 hour in a given familiar house, were enough for this, and the landmarks quickly came back to my memory. I also visited the houses, gardens, and streets that I saw more often in my everyday life, which also helped me build more detailed palaces. When studying for the exam, the palaces were automatically in my mind, "saved". I think we shouldn't spend a lot of time visiting palaces in our minds when we're not studying for the exam, it's much more worthwhile to actually visit places we know and have known before, because that way we will automatically have palaces. If that's not enough, later you can go to new, unknown houses and buildings to get new palaces, but in the end it was enough for me to go to places I've been to before in my life. First, it's better to review these familiar places well by actually visiting them. That way you will have palaces faster than if you were looking for new, unknown places.
After an exam, when we prepare for the next exam, we can reuse the palaces used in the previous exam. I needed this too, because I didn't have that many palaces. Then the newly placed images overwrite the old ones.
When studying with the palace, we should eliminate all distractions, for example, use earplugs or earmuffs to prevent disturbing sounds. We should study alone, preferably in a closed room, so that our attention is not disturbed by other people.
Dark locations, such as dark basements and dark attics, are not so good for palaces because the images placed there are less visible. I read about the importance of lighting in a palace in Joshua Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein and experienced it myself.
I also tried writing out individual palaces as text in Microsoft Word in advance, so that I could add the pictures later, but that turned out to be a waste of time and unnecessary. The palaces are always in my head, there's no need to write out individual landmarks in advance to learn.