I actually skimmed the book over before I took my first course in linear algebra (doing some of the exercises on my own, but certainly not all--I skipped anythi

I actually skimmed the book over before I took my first course in linear algebra (doing some of the exercises on my own, but certainly not all--I skipped anything that seemed too hard or just too boring during this reading). At that point, there were definitely parts of the book that were challenging to me, and I just jumped over them. Then when I took the actual course, I more or less ignored the main course textbook and instead tried to tie whatever happened in the last lecture with what I found in Axler. I considered Axler my secret weapon. It honestly felt like I had access to secret insights that trivialized the class and granted me the same intuition the professor had.