Many people have a false belief that your brain is a library that you can keep shoving books in and expect to remember. It is not, your brain is an amazing piece of tech that remembers things by their relevance to you. That's why if I say 9/11 you think of the twin towers and not what you were wearing. The brain sorts information and creates connections and things are more easily remembered when they have multiple connections.
When I started studying physics and biology I also took some time to learn some latin roots and it has been invaluable to me for remembering terms. In my head if I hear a word that has 'photo' in it I know that photo means light so when I see photosynthesis I see the two words photo=light synthesis=unification/construction/making something and then it is easier to remember that photosynthesis is how plants make their food from light.
That is just a simple example but their are much more crazy things, for example memorizing some of the periodic table. Harry Had Little Brilliant Bananas Coming Out From Near Nanna's Mouth And She Put Some Containers And Ketchup Sideways To Virtually Corrode My Feet Cos No-one Called Zoey.
And so on, the sillier the better because now I don't need to the silly phrase to remember but it certainly helped.
Even better than that Memrise lets you create flashcards that have silly pictures to help you remember as well as phrases. I remember the one for remembering the kanji for noisy and it had three women shouting (because the kanji for noisy contains three kanji for women). Very simple but still very easy to remember.
So remember brain connections are the way to learn!
