[openfuture]

For me this is how I learned mathematics up until university. By just going unprepared to exams or doing extracurricular competitions and then "inventing the math" in the exam. In the case of competitions it was a bit more fun than exams which would still just be testing one or two ideas with a few examples but still it is in my opinion the more fun way to go about it. All these kids who were memorizing things, or studying the thing to death, a lot of them had trouble understanding what it was that they were doing.

[onemoresoop]

I remember doing the same thing in my exams but the problem was that I'd always run out of time and wasn't getting the best grade. I was doing pretty good otherwise and my understanding was deeper. I wouldn't recommend doing that in exams if you care about grades. I didn't and still don't but not to the point of having bad grades or failing at anything.

[openfuture]

Yeah my grades were terrible but there was this one time that the teacher had to regrade everyone because I spotted something he hadn't seen himself and so my solution was better than the one everyone was repeating by rote memorization.

I always took the elite classes so that stung a lot for all those perfect students.

I don't give a fuck about grades, that system of assessments is cruel and inaccurate. It makes people stupid.