You mention exercises first and problems second. I completely agree on exercises. It's not that you can't solve them, but obviously you're way faster when you'v

You mention exercises first and problems second. I completely agree on exercises. It's not that you can't solve them, but obviously you're way faster when you've solved what is essentially the same exercise 50 times before. And school (and college) tests tend to be designed in a way where 80% of the time you do the same exercise you did before and you just gotta be fast. But for solving an actual problem, I would say that understanding is way more important. Because in actual problems you tend to spend most of your time transferring whatever information you have into solvable equations, and much less time (comparatively) solving those equations. So maybe my problem is more that tests aren't a great representation of real life problems, and less that homework doesn't prepare you well for tests.