Best study methods for organic chemistry and anatomy

Those of you brushing up on the GAMSAT may be interested in a recent Ask Metafilter question on the best ways to study these complex subjects.

An organic chemistry teacher made an interesting point against memorising reaction patterns with flashcards:

Organic chemistry is all about patterns. The question you see on an exam will look, at first glance, absolutely nothing like the example that you've studied, which is why the flash carders rarely do well. The trick to doing well is to learn the types of reactions, why they happen, and then seeing which of those apply to molecule/conditions in question. In most cases, a large molecule can be reduced down to a single functional group that's doing a very simple reaction, and the rest of it that's just along for the ride. Once you do that, there are usually a very narrow set of possibilities for a given problem.

Other useful tricks include

- Setting up a random revolving background image or wallpaper on your PC
- Breaking medical terminology into it's (Latin or Greek) word-roots to determine the meaning of the word, which will then more easily prompt your memory and understanding
- Using spaced repetition to vary how often you revisit material. One variation of this is the Leitner system where material is sorted based on the number of errors made in recall; other software implementations use a logarithmic drop-off in how frequently memorised material is presented.