In a high school biology class, my teacher was describing competitive inhibition of enzyme active sites. She said that the substrate wants to bind to the active site, however the inhibitor is already occupying the active site, preventing the substrate from binding. This example was beneficial to creating a rudimentary understanding of the relationship between the enzyme, substrate, and competitive inhibitor. However, its limitation was that it creates the false understanding that the substrate actively wants to bind to the substrate. In reality it does not actively seek out the enzyme. It is more accurate to say that the substrate comes into contact with the enzyme active sight and binds when in the proper proximity and orientation to fit the active sight. The likelihood of enzyme and substrate binding depends upon the enzyme and substrate concentrations and does not depend upon substrate actively seeking out the enzyme like suggested in the anthropomorphism above.

The act of drawing from memory is a great study practice, since it utilizes the concept of active recall, which thoroughly tests your knowledge of the concept. Simply reading information, taking notes, or drawing with external assistance creates a sense of false competency, and is a passive study method which results in an incomplete understanding of the concept.

This is probably similar to other concepts that are difficult to comprehend without prior knowledge, like ball in stick models in chemistry or the fourth dimension. Without prior mental models of these, it is incredibly difficult to visualize these concepts. The only way to create and enforce mental models of difficult concepts would be to consistently practice visualizing these concepts until a reliable mental model has been created.