Are you bad at writing tests?

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I'm in college right now, and my grades are pretty dismal. I don't feel like they reflect my actual understanding of the course material at all. That's because I don't take tests very well (a lot of the time, I'll think I did really well, but then I get my test back, and I got something like 60% or 65% or something like that), and when I have to do an assignment, I feel like it's not communicated clearly exactly what's expected. I'll do something the way I think they want it done, but it ends up being wrong. I'll end up making a lot of little mistakes that chip away at my grade until I end up with something like 60%.
When test questions are written in plain, straightforward language, I usually do pretty well. It's when they try to trick you that I end up screwing up. I have trouble remembering minute details, and I study what I think is important, but most of it ends up not being on the test, and I end up getting a crappy mark. I'll go into the test feeling like I'm prepared, but then when I start reading the questions, I think "crap. I didn't study that." Even the stuff I study, I end up starting to get confused during the test because of the wording of the questions. I have trouble remembering what I study.
I had psychoeducational testing a few years ago, and my working memory was something like 4th percentile, but I didn't get a diagnosis, so the disabilities office wouldn't have to give me any accomodations. I want to see a psychiatrist to try to get a diagnosis, but I'm worried that I'll end up going to someone who knows nothing about autism, or thinks it's being overdiagnosed, so is reluctant to diagnose me. Or tries to diagnose me with something else, like depression. (That happened to me when I went to the counsellor at my other college a few years ago. I thought I had ADHD, and she said "I don't think you have ADHD, I think you're depressed" which I wasn't. As if I wouldn't know if I was depressed or not?)

Does anyone else have problems like this in school?
If you're getting accomodations from your college, what accomodations are they giving you?

I am pretty good at tests. I never got anything less than 60% on ABDC tests even if I didn't study at all. The open-answer tests are slightly harder(I must know at least something about the subject) but I get a good grade from them too.
I am able to read the questions carefully and figure out my answer out of the bunch of knowledge I have in my head.

My knowledge is like a tangled mix of wool balls - each information I learn automatically tangles with a lot of different ideas(I learn by thinking "how can I use it in practice?", not by remembering) and if I think about a topic enough I can recall quite a lot of related informations "out of nowhere". One of my accomplishments I am proud of is writing an essay about something I read just one time, half of year earlier. I figured out the open exam question I got is an excellent practical example of what I was wondering when I was reading about the topic. I couldn't come to this conclusion back then but I was close enough and just thinking about the practical example at hand made me remember the flow of imagination I had back so I ended up recalling enough details to write the whole essay.


But assignments are troublesome. I will write them if I know what exactly I am supposed to write about but more often than not I have trouble figuring out what exactly they expect me to do.

I am especially bad if the assignment is only described verbally, not on paper. I can just stare blankly at the teacher and wonder "What the hell is he talking about?".
I have a teacher that does write assignments down but only sticks to very basic info (for example "Configure a router.") and explains everything else verbally, using a lot of details. I get lost about 3rd sentence and stop hearing anything, stuck on processing all the details he mentioned so far. Sometimes I end up saying "Too much information at once! I can't follow!" at that moment but the teacher just tells me it's my problem, not his and continues his explanation.

I need information written out or in the form of a scheme(I understand schemes and graphs the best). I suck at understanding verbal communicates in real time.

I'm bad with tests/exams/quizzes no matter which way you cut it. I'm not bad at them because I do poorly grade-wise on them (though sometimes my grades wind up not being great), I just get very nervous and anxious over them which doesn't help my anxiety.

I would much rather prefer writing a paper, though in a perfect world there would be no papers or tests.

Accommodation wise; any tests or exams I take I'll be able to do so in the testing center or in some quiet, low distraction and noise environment with extra time. I also am allowed to record my lectures via a digital voice recorder so that if I miss any notes I can go back to the recording. It also is just overall helpful to have the whole class saved to go back to any time I want.

most tests are an exercise in reading comprehension as well as knowing the material; when i was in college, i rarely got above 50% on written tests, simply becouse i didn't understand the question.
when doing a verbal version of the same test, i would get 80% or more; i even had one teacher agree to let me take a verbal test the same day as a written one, to test the difference without any more study time (well, lunch time in between, but that's barely enough to get 5% more), and indeed, i got 40% on the written test and 85% on the verbal one.

simply being able to clarify what is asked of me helps wonders in my scores, just as being able to reference specific details (the monecular mass of bio-ethanol; like i ever need to know that offhand).
when combining these two effects, i averaged 90% on the tests where i was allowed the book and verbal answering (speaking, writing, drawing, but mainly asking clarifications).
open-book doesn't help you if you dont understand the material, not in engineering, so i managed to get tests purely on *using* knowledge, rather than distilling the question from a story and having knowledge offhand

I understand the material I'm learning (microbiology/biotechnology), but it doesn't show in my grades.
There was an assignment I had to do for recombinant DNA technology, and I left a couple of questions blank because I didn't understand them. Because of that, I got a C on the assignment. The teacher called me into her office to talk to me about why I left the questions blank, and when I had a chance to explain what I didn't understand and have her explain the question to me, I was able to answer them and I got an A on the assignment.
I think if I was able to do questions that were more about understanding than memorizing, I would do a lot better on tests. Multiple choice questions are easier than short answer tests, but if I had to answer a question that asked me how I would do something to figure something out, I would do a lot better.
I also don't do very well when there's a lot of math in tests. Two semesters ago, I was taking inorganic chemistry, and the teacher would put a few multiple choice questions on the tests, but they were about 95% math, (and he didn't give us the formulas even though he said he would) so I failed every test, because I have a hard time memorizing formulas, and when they have letters and symbols, I have a hard time remembering what's supposed to go where. It's not that I don't understand how to solve it, I just can't remember what number is supposed to go where, and I end up with a really screwy answer. And it doesn't help that most of the time, we only solve a certain formula once, and we're supposed to remember it a month later for a test.

I had psychoeducational testing a few years ago that showed that my working memory is poor, but because I wasn't diagnosed with a learning disability, the college wasn't obligated to give me any accomodations, so I figured I wasn't eligible at this college, either, but now I'm thinking maybe I should take the paperwork in and find out if there's anything they'll do to help. The teachers are usually pretty helpful at this school.