Memorization?

An outright attempt to memorize this stuff will put anyone to sleep.

Memorization will get you Nowhere in Science, for several reasons. The most obvious reason is there is simply too much to memorize; Any attempt at even a small fraction of it will just get you confused and won't lead to Understanding anyway. Successful intimate familiarity will come naturally from Practice, not from rote memory. After a dozen or so attempts at problems that involve having to solve for the roots of a Quadratic Equation, for example, you will have developed a level of comfort that will be, for all practical purposes, an Effective Memorization of the solution to the quadratic equation "a x-squared plus b x plus c equals zero:" "x equals negative-b plus-or-minus the square root of b squared minus four a c, all over two a."

You may thinking, "Yeah, right. That's easy for you to say. You've been using this formula for years, and it's your business to know it. I'm just an undergraduate hoping to graduate someday." Of course it's my business (and it's decades, not years). But it is your business, too, if you want to graduate with a degree in Physics, Engineering, or Mathematics. More to the point, I had the formula effectively memorized before the end of my Junior year in High School. It was the practical result of many hours of Practice at using it. What do we call those hours of practicing? Studying. Lots of Studying. How much Studying? That is the next subject I will address. But first ...

I want to mention a Caveat to my injunction against rote memorization. There are branches of the Natural Sciences that do require a level of memorization higher than for Physics, Engineering, and Mathematics. Chemistry and the Life Sciences typically have a large upfront Vocabulary that must be mastered early before moving deeper into their respective fields. However, Effective Memorization techniques are just as good for them as for Physics. Instead of just memorizing a list of the skeletal bones of the human body, draw the relative location and size of each bone, and label it, as you verbally list all of them, for example. If you have to peek at the text occasionally while doing this, that's OK. What you would be doing is not memorization, but Studying.