A medical undergraduate asked me today how to “learn” pathology. Learning and memorisation are not the same thing, but memorisation is a good place to start. While there are many ways to memorise facts and a good understanding of the subject helps, an efficient way to systematically memorise large amounts of fairly incomprehensible material (e.g. a new language, e.g. pathology) is to use software based spaced repetition, where facts are presented in appropriately timed intervals to maximise retention without unnecessary repetition. A free software example is Mnemosyne. Other alternatives include supermemo which has many advanced features and memrise, which has many online courses.