> it's hardest to get started when the concepts are new and foreign and easier later when your just adding a deep understanding to what you have already fought to learn.

This is quite true; I feel this is the case with maths. Simple math, logic math is all fine, but higher maths and theorems I find very, very difficult to understand. Here this is one of the few areas where my memorizing techniques did not work well. Sure I can remember many things, but applying that knowledge is very different to just memorizing stuff.