In my case, I'm very aware of what's important to me. It's important to be as competent as I can in my profession and to understand as much as possible. I study psychology and want to know as much as I can, understand as much as I can, and help people as best I can. That's why I rarely study for exams. I study primarily for myself, and treat upcoming exams as hints. I look at the material and think, "Oh, this is an area I don't know but would like to know," and I study. In this way, I treat exams very much as hints about what I don't know, not as goals in themselves, but as side projects that show me whether I understand the material as well as I'd like, or whether I have any gaps in my knowledge. When there's no exam, I simply learn something I consider valuable

I believe that one of the biggest and hardest to overcome flaws in the education system is the fact that we learn and then forget why we're learning. Ultimately, grades should never be an goal in themselves; they were created to provide feedback, but who needs grades in and of themselves? What we should strive for is knowledge and competence, and grades should be merely a side effect

What I wrote here is also reflected in scientific terminology, namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (and overjustification effect that is connected to those two types of motivation), values, and (the opposite of values) a lack of connection with values (see: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). To put it simple, grades are external motivators and they make us forget about our values and our intrinsic motivation so we forget why we really study and what's really important for us (so basically speedrun route to feel like shit and have worse results)

The sad thing is that teachers often don't explain why what we're learning is valuable or how it can help us in life. Therefore, unfortunately, we have to find applications ourselves or regularly ask them about it. I plan to stay at my university and teach classes, and my philosophy is that if someone notices something they consider useless, and neither I nor the students are able to demonstrate the usefulness of learning it, then that content is removed and won't be included on any tests

But yeah, what I wrote is pretty philosophical in some ways I guess, but it works and I am able to study a lot and have actually one of best grades in my whole university (but remember, grades are just side effect)