I'm a PhD student in physics as of the time of writing this. In particular, I work on projects in the field of biophysics (I won't delve into a lengthy discussion about the exact nature and legitimacy of the field here).
One peculiarity of this interdisciplinary field is that researchers have to interact within two traditionally somewhat separated communities: the bio community and the physics community.
I did my undergrad in physics, so the latter was already somewhat familiar: I share the basic introductory curriculum with other physicists. However, I was NOT trained in biology, but I still have to make sense of data and interactions with people in that field. This is not always easy. One of the things that I have found particularly challenging is the amount of terminology (I'm looking at you, unpronounceable protein names) needed to make sense of the field. It took me way too long to realize that, to interact properly in the field, I needed to know about some of this nomenclature. I feel like for the longest time, I would just kind of surf on a wave of "Oh, I have no idea what this protein does, but I'm sure it'll all make sense later once I'm done reading this paper." I realized recently that actually learning briefly what each term you don't understand means helps me a lot in scientific reading comprehension. Once I have a rough idea of what each term means, I don't simply gloss over a sentence with my brain reading "We found that stuff-I-don't-know subject to stuff-I-don't-know stuff-I-don't-know supports stuff-I-don't-know". Instead, I'm actually reading and somewhat understanding what is said, and as a bonus, because I'm familiar with the terminology, I don't zone out as easily (that bonus is possibly one of the greatest benefits IMO). I have also felt like having a faster recall for concepts and ideas has made me able to mentally juggle with them faster.
So what did I do concretely to learn this terminology?
I still really like paper for certain things. Even in an age where everything is digitized, there are things that I have a harder time doing on a screen. With books, flashcards are one of them. I like to have them in paper cause I can quickly rearrange them in order I want, lay them all together on a table, or add notes on them in unstandardized ways.
As I'm reading bio papers with a lot of jargon, I now usually hold a set of little paper flashcards (some are empty, some have words like "ERK" or "ZAP-70" on them) and when I encounter a word that I'm not familiar with that looks important, I do a quick search and give that new piece of vocabulary its very own flashcard. On the back, I'll write rough ideas related to it (role, how it fits in the topic, history, etc.). Honestly, I rarely quiz myself with these (maybe I should?), but having a quick card-form glossary has been really handy. Whenever I look at a card and ask myself, "What does that protein do again?" I look at the card, and go "Ah, right, I remember now." It feels like the knowledge is sticking.
Before going on a trip to Japan, I figured I'd learn the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets to make up some of the stuff written around in the city (I did not expect Kanji to be so omnipresent...). These alphabets are made of symbols, each representing a sound. So, for example, the "さ" symbol is Hiragana for the "sa" sound. Combining them spells out Japanese (and sometimes foreign) words. The Hiragana and Katakana alphabets spell out pretty much the same syllables. I'm a little unclear on the reason behind having two sets of characters spelling the same sounds. I think I've read somewhere that some types of words are usually spelled with one and others are spelled with the other. I believe foreign words are often spelled using the Katakana alphabet. A very prominent one, in Katakana, you'll see almost every day, if you go to Japan is "カラオケ", standing for "karaoke". There are only about 40 ish characters for each alphabet (which is nothing compared to the Kanji, a non-phonetic alphabet).
So what did I do? I made flashcards!
The evening before leaving home, I made myself a bunch of small flashcards to learn the Hiragana alphabet. It worked so well to learn them that I made another set for the Katakana alphabet.
I am on an 800-something day streak learning Spanish on Duolingo, pero mi español no es bueno.... That's more than 2 years of Spanish! Why am I not better at it? This is just a theory, but maybe passively learning a language for 2 minutes a day doesn't do much? To clarify, I'm not a Duolingo hater; it's just that the way I'm using the app is clearly not conducive to efficient learning. I figured that I could apply the same flashcard idea to language learning. These past experiences, both in terms of science and with the Japanese Kanas, have taught me one thing: sometimes you just gotta brute force learning and memorize stuff.
I've been told so often (especially in physics): "You don't need to memorize, you just need to understand" or stories like "When I was in high-school there were these people that only memorized everything with no understanding, pfff *eyeroll* look at them now... They got to their undergrads and couldn't keep up".
While I hold in high esteem whatever we mean by "understanding", I am finding myself questioning the whole "memorization-thrashing" narrative that I've witnessed (and taken part in) over the years. I now think there is value in the process of memorizing certain things. Some people might have some crazy good memories, where they can memorize and recall everything they witness, but that is not my case: my memory is more akin to a strainer than to a bowl. I need repetition until eventually things start sticking, and flashcards are a great medium for this process. I'm now hoping to use this tool to actually grind Spanish, instead of passively trying to learn it with the least amount of possible effort (sorry, Duo).
To help with this, I made this web-app that makes flashcards for the 1000 most common words in Spanish (and while I'm in Korea, I figured I'd make one for Korean words, but that one is more to practice reading Hangeul phonetically.) Also, I know: I said I like paper, and here I am making a digital flashcard set. In my defense, I will probably make myself a paper version too.
I'm rediscovering flashcards for learning, and I'm rediscovering the value of just memorizing some stuff the hard way. This is not saying that I'm not "pro-understanding", but simply that I think memorizing is slightly underrated.