I will be going down this road in a couple of weeks and hopefully I would come out victorious. For the exam part several things here: commands must be memorized and solutions to problems learned. I was often told my some of my teachers that we should learn rather than cram but another teacher clarified our understanding by explaining to us that some learning has to do with cramming, like our names; these have nothing with understanding, you just had to cram them but how to use that name in a proper sentence, that is the part you need to learn.