ok so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor is licensed and he's been showing me some stuff and it seems really cool. anyway i finally decided to just go ahead and take the technician exam but honestly i dont even know where to begin with studying. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website i think but its just like... 400 questions? and some of them make zero sense to me. like the electrical theory stuff especially. i took one practice test on hamstuddy or whatever its called and got like a 58% which is pretty discouraging. do people actually memorize all this or is there a better way to go about it. i have about 3 weeks before theres a test session near me

3 weeks is honestly plenty of time, dont stress too much. the question pool loops around a lot more than it looks like at first, there are only so many ways they can ask about band privileges and FCC rules before it starts repeating itself. for the electrical theory stuff i wouldnt bother trying to deeply understand all of it right away, a lot of people just kind of pattern-match the answers after seeing the same questions enough times. hamstudy is great but also check out hamstudy.org if thats not what youre already using because it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and focuses on those. i passed with like 5 days of casual studying, maybe 30-45 minutes a day. the exam is 35 questions and you need 26 right so theres some room to just completely blank on the hard stuff

yeah what he said about hamstudy is right, that site is probably the single best free resource out there for this. but i'd also say dont sleep on the gordon west technician book if you want something more than just drilling questions. it actually explains the why behind a lot of the electrical stuff which helped me way more than just memorizing answers. the ohms law questions especially, once you just remember the little triangle trick it becomes automatic. the rules and regulations section is honestly the easiest part once you read through it a couple times because a lot of it is just common sense about not interfering with other stations and identifying yourself and stuff like that. you'll be fine, 58% on your very first cold practice test is actually not bad at all