Youth and Egolatry by Pio Baroja — Read

I was never more than commonplace as a student, inclining rather to be bad than good. I had no great liking for study, and, to tell the truth, I never entertained any clear idea of what I was studying.

For example, I never knew what the word preterite meant until years after completing my course, although I had repeated over and over again that the preterite, or past perfect, was thus, while the imperfect was thus, without having any conception that the word preterite meant past -- that it was a past that was entirely past in the former case, and a past that was past to a less degree in the latter.