Mugging up the Constitution, Failing anyway

I'm on night shift, 4 hours to go and I still haven't grasped the difference between Directive Principles of State Policy and the Basic Structure. 2 hours of mugging up, 1 hour of making flashcards, 1 hour of quizzing myself. Score: 7/10 - not as bad as I thought, but definitely need to work on Article 14. Was thinking about making a chart of 'who said what' for our landmark judgements, but then I got lazy.

Example: In Re Berubari Union AIR 1960 SC 845, Supreme Court held which part of the Constitution? And what were the repercussions? (Ans: Article 20(2) and the President's power to declare an area a union territory.) Uff, can someone please tell me why this is so hard?