I'm about to graduate this December and I truly feel like I have an issue with learning complex topics. I'm a CS major for context. After my freshman or sophomore year, I realized that I'm pretty solid with reading, memorizing and spitting back out info, but taking info/frameworks and applying it to new problems/contexts is where I fail. I feel like my brain is hopelessly linear/rudimentary when I try to solve problems, if that makes any sense. Since realizing that, I have not fixed this gap, I've just been barely getting through school. I seem to have a...hill that I need to climb before I get into a focused, deliberate state of learning and applying hard things. When I do manage to complete complex work...it's poorly done/organized/thought through. This is likely a result of a combination of poorly selected shortcuts in learning/getting through classes and doing the bare minimum at certain points. I valued getting through school over thoroughly understanding what I'm doing and maybe having to retake some more classes. I'm at a point where this weakness has shown/will probably show in high level classes and potentially in whatever job I start in January. I'm not sure if I'll ever be someone who "loves to solve problems" or "loves getting into the details", but I'd like to be able to get to that kind of mindset when necessary.

Now, I think can have a bad to mediocre career at this point, but I don't think I'll achieve the goals I have unless I handle this issue. So ya - how do I learn how to learn hard things? Or how do I learn to turn my desire to learn/apply certain topics/do certain projects into meaningful action? If anyone has gone from a similar point to actually becoming thoroughly competent - I would love to hear how you turned the ship around.