I can't solve anything and it is so frustrating
So back in June 2025, I started my journey at the academy by taking CBBH, then CWEE, and finally I recently finished CPTS after them. (I only took the job role path I haven't taken the exam for any of them yet.) I solved almost all skill assessments blindly without looking at solutions and took notes for each course. After finishing all of these courses, I really felt confident, like I could conquer any system in front of me. Then I decided to start on the main app and solve some boxes and challenges.
In my first week, I only took 5 machines and 2 challenges (all of them had Very Easy or Easy difficulty and were Linux based), and I COULDN'T SOLVE ANY OF THEM without looking at the writeup. Even though I had my notes to use, it felt like I was just looking at some useless bullshit, because used to copy paste most of the text in each module.
I usually do fine with the foothold (since all of the easy machines rely on CVEs) and get a shell, but doing privilege escalation feels so hard and forces me to spend at least 1–3 hours on a machine.
Even when I take a look at the writeup, sometimes it ends up being a technique that I already know, which makes me so mad because I wasted my time on something I could have done way earlier.
In the last few days, I decided to watch more IppSec videos to improve my methodology, and I think it helped a little bit, but I still could not solve a machine all by myself.
It is really frustrating, and I am feeling like I just wasted my time taking the courses and ended up not being able to apply most of the things.
Have any of you guys experienced this? if so how can overcome it ? It is so annoying, I almost broke my laptop because of it.