How to enjoy drafts/prereleases more?

Hey all,

I've been into Magic for a while now. I've participated in a few prereleases and also went through a period where I drafted quite a bit.

Thing is, I just never had a ton of fun. I'd pitch up with a general idea of which decks/archetypes are good in that set, but inevitably just end up building a terrible pile of cards and losing most, if not all, of my matches.

Is there something that I'm missing? Do I need to study the sets more? Practice in limited environments more?

Just curious, because the people that I know that draft love it and prefer it to any other way of playing MTG.

TIA!