None of this has anything to do with academic computer science. I think I'm just unusually bad at memorizing syntax.
In order to get that tough question, you could carefully read the book, read his assignment solutions, and pay close attention to his caveat warnings in lectures... One of the three would typically contain the tough question.
Or, you could just read the book, do the assignments, and accept ~95% on the final exam as a maximum grade.
A ~95% cap, for a lot less work, is a good deal. Taking the deal is probably the right call for most people.
That being said, the thing I wish someone explained well is how amazing lambdas can be. I understood the benefits of list/array/stream processing on first glance, but it took a few years before I really understood the practical application of lambdas.
There is a "JavaScript Edition" of SICP. The preface says ECMAScript 2015 enabled a close match by adding lambda expressions, tail recursion, and block-scoped variables and constants.
It doesn't mention much downside except that JavaScript's "rigid syntactic structure complicated the implementation" of some programming language design book material.
You WILL get very interesting ideas and concepts, it's fun, basically, that's it.
+ You won't solve problem faster than your colleges with solid competitive programming background;
+ you won't be able to optimize the code and cut 30% of your company's server cost,
+ you won't feel comfortable to read real-world complex project code,
+ you won't get some domain-specific knowledge to solve problems you previously can't solve.
+ .....
It won't make you a better problem solver; at least its impact is way smaller than pick up go/rust/cpp/java and carefully try implement challenge like: https://github.com/codecrafters-io/build-your-own-x
GIS is certainly interesting in its own ways, and it taught me some visualization and design skills, but I wish it would have been possible for me to learn more of what's going on under the hood of the massive libraries and high-level languages I use every day as a professional "software engineer"
So I decided to learn SICP on my own. I already have the book, so I'll watch the MIT lectures of the original authors available online, and try to make progress.
I'm not in any hurry to complete it anytime soon.