I always found that I had less trouble with the material in the courses and way more trouble figuring out what it was the instructor wanted from me. It would take a couple of weeks to scope out what they thought was important and wanted me to regurgitate and in what form to them. (Note, this was not necessarily what I - or other instructors - thought was important.) Usually had to take one test, in a class where we got feedback on tests (I hated those classes where there were only one or two tests the whole semester!), at least, to scope them.
I did have two excellent instructors - one was a psychiatric nurse who was moonlighting teaching writing. She would tear my papers apart, point out ways that they could be better or other avenues to explore, then let me put them back together again and resubmit for a final grade. I learned so much from her! The other was my "Intro to Western Civ" class Prof. I'd been out of high school for over a decade when I went to that college, and I was clueless as to how do a proper essay exam. He did the same thing, although he had 300+ kids in that class. I found him when he wasn't in class, asked how to make it better when I got a "B" on my first exam, and he sat down with me for an hour and explained various strategies and presentation methods. Learned a lot more than the names of Greek and Roman sculpture from him!
The rest of the classes - the material was either already outdated, would be outdated by the time I graduated, is now outdated, or has not been something I have ever needed to use or reference since then. I do still enjoy the literature I amassed in the English Lit classes, though. For what it is.