Final Exams

So, the last couple weeks of my life have been spent preparing for two things:
1) Philmont (but I'll get into that later) and
2) Finals.
Now, I'm not daunted by the finals, but I'm slightly bothered by the concept. The whole thing is that our entire class, everything that we learn, isn't designed for real world application. Oh no, it's all for passing a final exam. The problem with that is we're only learning what we'll need for the finals, and nothing else. I am deeply bothered by that fact. Also, since my teachers generally know what is going to be on the test, the tell us what we need to study, not just everything that we learned in the class. That just makes a lot of class time feel like a waste of time. But I haven't taken my finals at this point in time, so I speak with pretty much no experience on the subject, so if you have taken finals, tell me what they're like, and If you haven't, tell me what you think they're going to be like.