so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it looks really cool, and also i got into it a bit during the last big storm when cell service was out and he was able to communicate fine. anyway i finally decided i want to actually get licensed but i honestly dont know where to start. like do i need to memorize the whole question pool or is there a smarter way to study? and how hard is the technician exam actually, im not great at the electrical theory stuff. also not sure if i should just walk into one of those testing sessions or if i need to sign up somewhere ahead of time. any advice would be appreciated, sorry if this is a dumb question

not a dumb question at all, everyone starts somewhere. honestly the technician exam isnt that bad, the question pool is like 400 something questions and the actual test is only 35, so you just need to hit 26 right to pass. i used hamstudy.org almost exclusively and just drilled questions every night for maybe two weeks. the site tracks your weak spots which is nice. the electrical theory section tripped me up a little too but for tech you really only need a basic grasp of it, like ohms law and a few other things. for finding a test session look up your local ARRL affiliated club, most of them run VE sessions pretty regularly and yeah you do usually need to sign up ahead of time, they dont always take walk-ins. bring a valid ID and the fee which is usually like 15 bucks or so. you got this

hamstudy is good like the other person said but i'd also throw out the ARRL Technician manual if you actually want to understand the material rather than just memorize answers. i know some people say just grind the question pool and thats fine for passing but if you actually want to get on the air and understand whats happening, the book helps. that said i know plenty of folks who just did the flash card method and passed first try so do what works for you. one thing i will say, dont stress too much about the math questions, a few of them you can just learn the formula and plug in numbers, its not like you're doing calculus. and once you pass tech dont wait too long to get on the air, thats the part where you actually learn stuff, the license is just the door