Convert ideas into pics and acronyms.

Let me display my qualification first :) and then get to the topic. In the student years till my Masters from BITS, Pilani and then 14 years in IT there were a lot of tips and tricks that I gathered (many from others and a few of mine). Allow me to begin sharing those. When my dad started for office 2 decades back he use to mur mur "Pe, Ru,Cha, Pa,Pa". It literally meant Pen, Rumal (hankie, you need one in Mumbai), Chavi (key), Pakit (wallet) and Pass (railway season ticket). This checklist helped him ensure that all that's required before getting out of house is with him. While he was with me in Bangalore he tweaked it and converted it to "Mo,(Ti),Ru,Cha,Pe,Pa" where Mo is mobile phone, Ti is for ticket which should be used if you are travelling and one Pa got converted to Pe for pen.

In my IX standard one Chemistry teacher (Sharma Sir) engraved 3rd row elements of Periodic Table in my heart. He told us to remember a Hindi sentence "na maaji, alsi paaji, so gaya hai chlorine aur argon peeke". This literally means, "Mummy, don't worry, the lazy bugger has drunk Chlorine and Argon and he has slept off". Its easy to write the list Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Cl, Ar if you remembered the sentence. Similar lists are available to remember 9 planets, Mother Very Easily Made Jan Stop Using Nail Polish and resistor colour codes.

Can you students come up with such lists which will help you remember some important pieces in your syllabus from loads of information that you are cramming in your heads.

Dont waste too much time in creating lists if you cannot make them. Instead, draw tiny diagrams, cycle charts, graphs, formulae around your notes or text books of your understanding of the subject in addition to those that are available in books. Use colours to add more meaning to the diagrams, use highlighters. Let those tiny diagrams pop out and talk to you when you open the book the next time. Recently I was happy to see how how a bubble sort is displayed on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_sort). A picture is worth 1000 words. Picturise as many concepts as you can.

I am poor at remembering things. I use to write all that I had to cram, sometimes thrice. Writing slows down the speed of your mind to such an extent that if the logic is understood there is no other way but to remember the concept. You have to strike a balance between applying logic and writing-to-remember. I had to correct a XII standard student who was trying to mug up concepts of Magnetism without understanding the meaning of word 'fictitious'. Many of us are lazy to pick up a dictionary and look for the meaning of words and then we blame it on poor concentration. As a student we should know what we don't know.

So, for non-Maths subjects the flow of study looks like:
1-Read the concept
2-Visualise, apply logic, imagine what it is
3-Draw/picturise the concept
4-Write if you don't remember
5-Reproduce
6-Juggle/iterate above steps as per your need.

Best wishes!