so i've been wanting to get my tech license for a while now and i finally downloaded the question pool pdf from the arrl website but honestly i'm just kind of staring at it and dont know where to start. there's like 400+ questions and some of the electrical stuff i haven't thought about since high school which was... a long time ago lol. a friend told me to just memorize the answers without really understanding them but that feels wrong? like i want to actually know what im doing when i get on the air eventually. is there a study guide that actually explains the why behind things or should i just grind through hamstudy or whatever. also how long did it take most of you to feel ready, i dont want to schedule the exam and embarrass myself

hamstudy.org is honestly where id start, just do the practice exams over and over until youre consistently hitting 85% or above and you'll be fine. the real exam pulls from the same pool so nothing surprises you. i studied maybe two weeks, like 20-30 minutes a day while eating lunch and passed no problem. some of the electrical theory questions you can kinda figure out with common sense if you think about it, ohms law stuff especially, but yeah a lot of people just memorize and thats totally fine for tech, the general and extra are where you really need to understand whats going on. dont stress about embarrassing yourself, the VEs have seen everything and theyre volunteers who want you to pass

i used the gordon west book when i studied and it does explain the reasoning behind things which i liked. its not super deep but at least you understand why the answer is what it is instead of just pattern matching. that said i also did hamstudy on my phone whenever i had a few minutes, like waiting in line or whatever. the frequency and band stuff tripped me up at first because theres so many numbers to remember but they come up enough in practice that it sticks eventually. just pick one method and actually do it every day, thats the main thing, dont cram it all the night before