I read a great deal as a kid, too. Mostly scifi :-)
I made the mistake of attempting to learn German by memorizing. But who can remember which nouns go with der, die, or das? Not me. I bet the right way is to simply read the newspaper every day, looking up the words one doesn't know, one by one.
I heard something on This American Life, I think, about a "strong student" from a bad high school doing poorly on the SAT. I got the impression she hadn't prepared at all...which seems odd for a strong student when there are free resources.
> memorizing vocab
The College Board got called out for some of this after the "regatta" incident. It turns out rich kids were much more likely to know the term for a boat race. Oops.
I'm really curious to see the outcomes of the no-SAT cohort of college students, once the 2020-2021 year is ignored, data cleaned, etc. Even if GPA was enough in 2020, it seems like it would get harder and harder to compare schools over time without a standardized test.
I was just a kid. I didn't hang out in bars. I had no idea what the contents of a martini were.
I thought it was unfair, and was so annoyed I still recall it :-)
And also - I agree - I never really learned “grammar rules” or the details of writing. I just learned from listening, talking, and reading many many books in elementary and middle school. To prepare for a test by memorizing vocab seems inherently the wrong approach.