Strategy to study a HUGE amount of facts?

Homework and Study Help
1

Hey guys,

So I’m taking a university course about the Middle Eastern Economical History. Now the test is in a week from now, and there is an enormous amount of stuff the course demands to remember.

Now they test is very tactical and using a lot of listing question. And the demand is to remember -everything-.

Examples for questions to be in the test:

  1. List all the negative effects for the demographic growth at the 20th century.
  2. List all the reasons that the demand for water grew rapidly in the Oil-market countries after the 1960s.
  3. List all the factors for an agrarian revolution in Egypt.

Etc’, etc’. And there are TONS of questions like this. The good thing is that it’s also the way the course was taught. Lists over lists over lists - of course with a bit of detail. Now I made a power-point presentation with all those lists of lists (130 slides, I kid you not). Now just to exemplify what’s going on here, there are 13 subject @this course. Here I will list 1 subjects, and its sub-subjects (and therefore, a list to be remembered!).

1. International Trade
What are the stages of Middle Eastern international trade?
-Before the 19th century, the ME is a transit area.
-Entrance of the Europeans who put high costumes on middle eastern products to protect their local economy.
-Until WWII - ME countries export raw products and import finished products.
-After WWII - ME countrie export oil and import finished products.

What is similar between the two last eras?
-Relying on one product.
-ME countries export raw products and import finished products.
-Monoculture markets.

What is different between the two last eras?
-The focus shifted from the coastline (Egypt, Lebanon) to the gulf.
-There is an ability to effect the worldwide price
-Before there was little capital with much working force, now there is a lot of capital with little working force.
-The exported goods (oil) is unique and large in amount.

And this goes on and on (there are like 4 more slides about international trade, and it’s 1/13 subjects!!!).

What do I do? Tried using a memory palace but I didn’t manage to visualize all of the facts…

Thanks for any assistance,
Ohad

2

Have a look at Strengthening the Student Toolbox by John Dunlosky and more so 20 rules of formulating knowledge in learning which is a great set of ideas for learning a whole bunch of data. That relates to supermemo, but you could also use Anki Spaced Repetition Software or others.

I think How We Learn by Benedict Carey is worth picking up too.

1 Like
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I’m also with some difficulties in using loci. i’m a student of law, and so I must memorize whole books of laws and theory about them. well, though i’m new to this techinique (loci) i have already used a lot the number map (i know them from 1 to 100), and i keep using it to enhance memory palaces.

the point is: the rooms are too small to store so many information, and i always have to creat landscapes like windows, like putting new objects, creating magical items, lots od ipads videos (wich are not as good as the magical paintings like harry potter’s) to store more information.

the way i found to use loci, is not making a regular journey because i don’t need to remember things in an order. instead, i enter in the first room (that is my classroom) and i see everything working at once: to left there’s a topic glowing, just ahead some teachers are writing on the board, the chairs are numbered and the students sit on them are the law’s articles (using numbering map, so that means for this year i have 250 chairs), back the room there are the old philosophers i’m studying, they’re kinda discussing with some objects that helps me to recall their discution, and there are some ipads wich show a video of each of their thinking. there’s also some bookshelves i have read this semester. going back to entrance and looking up i can see the philosophers (cause i’m studying philosophy) and they are discussing high on a glass room up in the classrom, wich i can access through a wooden stair, and there are some shelves wi th the items wich represent their theories and they keep talking, but i can interupt them for they to explain to me the item and this item may resume all i know about it or it’s a teleport item (like harry potter) wich leads me to another room (when i need more details)

as you can see, i’m creating too dynamic information. i started just with my classrom raw as it is and then created all other stuff. i think i’ve reached the limit for it. and my doubt is: is it better to create a room fro every subject and inside of that room i put the topics i’m studying, or i could keep up with this just training more?

if i need to create a room for every single subject i think i will have to attach to the room i have already created. that’s the point of my doubt: i have no places that are big enough to store all the information i will study on this 5 years, so i will always have to create a room or input some new loci inside the rooms i have already created. but i’m not surely it will work. i wouldn’t like to discover it 3 years later. does someone make loci to memorize all subjects from the college?

i’m starting now to study the class subject before to understand it, and in the class while the teacher is explaning, i start creating encoders to the information and store them in that classroom. (that means i need about 5-10 locci per day at least).

4

Hi. I don’t know if you still use this forum. I want to ask you how did you do and how you solved that. .

5

Hi. Several years after how you do it now?