The only games you should be memorizing is master games. Not that I think you should memorize tons of master games, as that would go against what Dan Heisman teaches, who is a really good chess coach, but, if you ever want to memorize a game, let it be a game a master played, not one like this.
Understanding general principles is more important than understanding how you could have done better in an already won game. it's best to study games that you lost, with a stronger player...
I genuinely would appreciate the feedback
Really looking to improve my chess this holiday (currently a 12th grade student) with the hope of getting into the Uni chess team. Also, on a somewhat unrelated topic, where should I put in most of my efforts to get to a comfortable rating for university chess team. I'm from SA, so it isn't AS big of a deal as it is in Russia or the US, but it's still tough. I pretty much would love to be able to reach a rating of around 1700 (partially but not overly ambitious) with 3 months devoted almost entirely to the study of chess.
P.S I read more about chess than I actually play like chess so my verbose writing can be accredited to my GN status #grandNoob.
Tl;dr: When is materialistic play a necessity? How should I have better capitalised after 6. Nb5 Qa5+? How do we play a solid middle-game while still creating a favourable endgame if we were to just simplify by trading away everything except our pawns and perhaps rooks? What are the best ways to improve overall chess rating from 1200 - 1700 (my attempt to quantify the improvement, though my rating is less important than my actual abilities) in a few months of devoted study?