Ask what each step is for
Why does the cell do this? What is it extracting, or spending, or preparing for? A pathway is a sequence of *purposes*, and the molecules are the intermediate states those purposes produce. Learn the purposes and the molecules follow; learn the molecules and you have a list that will evaporate under exam pressure.
This is elaborative interrogation applied ruthlessly: keep asking why until you hit something genuinely arbitrary. There is much less arbitrary residue than the textbook implies.
Regulation is what's actually examined
Exams rarely ask you to list a pathway. They ask what happens when it's inhibited, what regulates the rate-limiting step, what happens when you're starving or diabetic or exercising. Those questions are about *control*, and control is where the whole subject is going.
- Know the rate-limiting step and its regulators for every pathway. This is the single highest-yield fact per pathway.
- Know where the pathways connect. Metabolism is a network, and the junctions are where exam questions live.
- Practise perturbation. Break one enzyme and reason downstream. That *is* the exam question, so practise it directly.