Memorizing Anatomy

Hey guys!
Finally, a legitimate academical blog post! By the way, I've updated my "I Applied" blog post with a few changes! http://makestudyingalifestyle.blogspot.ca/2015/11/university-applications-i-applied.html
Last year, a had a pleasure of talking a Pre-Kinesiology course at school, which contained Basic Anatomy and Physiology of major body systems, as well as a more detailed anatomy of a musculoskeletal system. Overall, I really enjoyed the course and even applied to the Kinesiology program at McMaster University.
When learning a lot of words in a day, you have to have certain studying techniques. In this post, I've outlined 8 methods of learning anatomy, which will hopefully help you as much as they helped me last year. Before we start, I should mention that the main tip for learning anatomy is PRACTICING.


1. Labelling
Basic! Labelling must be practiced. When you're labelling, you are memorising. As simple as that. Label the diagrams until perfect. If you're having trouble with memorising so much, here is the help:

2. Colouring
For all of you guys who are visual learners, a good exercise is to colour. When you colour, you take your time to kind of think about the area which you're colouring and memorize the name of it better.

3. Draw
That method, I find, is much more effective than colouring; and I'm not talking about professional drawing here. I'm talking about very abstract anatomical diagrams. Here is one of my examples:

Here, I drew an abstract diagram of a given anatomical picture. I fitted everything into a rectangle, which outlines the general location of the organs given. Then, I looked at their names (located at the back of the flashcard) and a labelled the diagram accordingly. 

4. Mnemonic Devices

That method of studying is huge. An advantage is that you get to condense information by a dozen of times. Here is what I did:

I looked at the names of the parts of the sacrum and condensed them onto the written above mnemonic device. Keep in mind that you can "square" the letters which repeat, but the key of this method is to know perfectly the pronunciation of all names.

5. Order
If you know that your teacher uses the same diagram over again, try to label them in a certain order (downwards/upwards) which will help you on the test.

6. Hard First
This is rather a tip than a method. You should memorize the hard names first. By saying hard, I mean long, non-associable, funny words. (Such as Sternocleidomastoid).

7. Association
Some organs (often muscles) are hard to memorize, although on the other hand, if you know the associated body parts, it will be much easier to remember.  For instance, radius is a bone located in the forearm area, near ulna. The way to memorize which one is which, is to remember that you take radial pulse near the thumb, what means that radius is the bone closer to the thumb.

You can also associate certain body parts with regular words if you take time to think of it. For example, the bone humerus, is similar to the word "humorous". 

8. Song/Story/Poem

If you are very creative, write a little song, or a story, or a poem about a body part. It will be much easier and fun to learn the words that way. If you are not super creative, though, I'm sure you can look up stuff like that created by other people, and see if it helps you remember. 

Good luck!