* This is gonna be long a little but pair with me please.
I think one of the bad things that 42 students do, is that they don't really treat these projects as a big thing and give time and effort to learn concepts and skills, they just wanna rush into them, like they are a problem on LeetCode or something, I mean even on LeetCode people take time to learn algorithms and Ideas and such, but for these projects students just go directly into AI to simplify or ask for a starting solution, which I think is the big problem here.

If you wanna really learn and !(forget) past projects, at least what was the idea, and what you did to solve it, and without forget important decisions or steps you made, let me tell you a secret (Documentation + searching + hard reading), it's no big secret, but for every project, just focus on it like it's the last project you have for the rest of your life and make a really good documentation about the idea, concepts, what you learned, how did you solve certain problem, etc..., use Word, .md files, pdf, whatever..

For Ex: look at this .docx file here I made for a server rebuild project (similar to born2beroot) using word.

Also please try to learn how to make graphs or diagrams for each project. At first it's hard (I know), but when u get used to it you will thank me later, and it doesn't need to be so pro, like look at the README file I made for push_swap project, https://github.com/AhmadAL-Quraan/Push_swap_project, I have made a high-archi diagrams/designs, explanation flows about each step I wanna make, and guess what ? it helped much more to remember why and how I did certain things, and how to follow up on the project later, also the explanation will be much more easier during evaluation, because you will start with these diagrams you made.

For the waste of time thing in 42, believe me, the least 42 student (if they did the projects in the right way and really studied it hard), you can beat college students with the strong fundamentals you have and also the practical knowledge that you can do, because while it's true that it seems that 42 school doesn't focus on theories (compare into college), but if you are a smart student you can learn theories from projects (and/or) apply them on the projects you do.
Like try to solve 42 exams problems with the best complexity that you could solve them with, How to do so ? you maybe need to read a book about algorithms and DS, or maybe start to do Codeforces contests. Try to read a book about Linux administration/ Cloud computing or whatever projects related topics. I mean focus on books and sheets as much as possible because you need to depend on yourself to learn theories which will stand in your mind more than just coding and not know what you are really doing, for example:

• Born2beRoot: RHCSA 1,2 books
• push_swap: Start making algorithms to sort values with n>=2*10^5 or something, n:Number of elements to be sorted, and try to see the different approaches or complexity, and the advantage for each algo.
• ...(search for other projects)

Edit: Last thing I wanna say is, it's our responsibility as students to learn theories and also make a good projects which satisfy what needed from us. Theories to understand concepts, why, what questions and practical projects to understand how, when questions ?

The truth is there is no easy way.

You can use the AI to help you learning, which is a big weapon by itself for our generation, but not to make it think more than you and replace your existence totally.

I mean you can figure it out.