Memorizing or understanding?

It depends on the situation. If there is short time remaining and the topic is complicated the generally understanding is much better. Because memorizing takes time and there are risks to forget what you have memorized. On the other hand memorizing in better when there is plenty of time because simply understanding won't help to stay in memory for a long time. But the best thing is memorizing after understanding. That I generally do which helps a lot. But being an idle person I use to understand the topic and try to remember the main points just few days or day before the exam.

Honestly it is a balance of both understanding and memorizing. Memorizing alone is a bit hard as you have to remember everything perfectly to write down in an exam. This may give you good results in grades but is useless in life. Only understanding will help you in life but will not help in progress as you will not get grades to land a good job. Balance both of these, you will get good grades, good job and a good life.

I'm an average student. I seldom make notes but when exam comes, I'll get the tips from my teachers and then try making some notes or memorize if I need to. I've done quite well in the past few years where the course of memorizing comes into place. However, understanding also has to come into place when memorizing. Without understanding, it's equivalent to nothing achieved. I've tried that before too and trust me, it's very hard to memorize without understanding. If you do that, it's just so dull and nothing goes into your mind. It's just the words which go in, not the image.

I really hate memorizing stuff- especially dates/numbers/formulas... But it's inevitable. It's all in the mind, you just have to tell yourself that you need to do this, you want to do this (memorization)- and after a while it gets into your head. I also find it helpful to memorize with my friends/classmates- testing each other. And to understand the lesson ,read it many times- and yes, don't cram- just read and analyze..

I do all my lessons in a outline form and use my own words and my own researches to understand the lessons in all my classes. For me, it's the best way to go over a lessons especially in a time crunch like exam time or reporting/presentation. In an event of a test, I usually tend to procrastinate since that works for me. when I'm in the mood, I get my outline and study all the way until the teachers arrives. In that way, the lessons are still fresh in my mind and I won't have to resort to cheating (not that I ever cheated).

for me it's the best thing to understand between the lines than to memorize each lines. because if understand the lesson you don't need to memorize each lines coz you will remember the main thought of that.rather that memorizing those is a funny thing because you did not focus to understand that thought of that certain lessons.

It depends on the subject. For example, way back in college I had to memorize the formula first in Math subjects like Algebra and Geometry. Because once you memorized them you can proceed to the next step especially in case studies. Then, understanding follows. But to some subjects, I had to understand them first so that it would be easy for me to memorize. This really helped me a lot when I had an objective type of exams.