I think for me, it was the same thing while learning calculus than anything else I have learned. I had to do a lot of exercises to really get the material. The chain rule for instance, seemed alien to me initially. It wasn't after I decided to do a lot of the problems at the end of the section that I truly could see the pattern. With me, I tend to only see patterns that I know exist (although sometimes my brain confabulates and confuses me).