Encounter of a third kind

This week I am having my mid-semester exams and they are coming as a big revelation to me. Sunday's paper on Statistical Foundations of Machine Learning was a cultural shock. It was an open notes, open books exam. But those books weren't much use against the barrage of questions. Our professor was generous enough to give us another hour and a half for solving the paper. It didn't help. I knew a lot of stuff, but that couldn't come to my aid to solve some really good problems. Well, knowing is not a measure of true understanding. Only when the knowing can be and is applied to practice (like solving problems) does it lead to worthy understanding, because a problem stimulates a logical sequence of thoughts and exposes flaws in your understanding. With that insight, I prepared for today's paper on Data Mining. I fared somewhat better, now will continue to adapt to this new way of working.