[the_gorilla]

This was basically my experience in college too. There was no time to understand something, and tests didn't test your understanding. If you tried to solve a proof for the first time you'd run out of time and fail. You just had to grind homework and book questions until you could shit them out in 5 minutes each.

[oceanplexian]

Unfortunately, employers aren’t hiring people to “understand” anything either. They are hiring fungible human resources who can follow instructions and grid out solutions. It took me years to understand this and I don’t like it, but it’s how most of the industry works.

[the_gorilla]

Growing up I was fed a false idealistic version of college by every college-educated teacher and adult, and it cost me $40000, so the betrayal in academia was felt much more strongly than work.

[yongjik]

That's an odd complaint. The time to solve a proof for the first time is when you're doing your homework. The course work is supposed to make you practice until your brain can easily pick up the recurring patterns.

Sure, if the course is very poorly designed or the student is very unmotivated, they may end up just memorizing everything while somehow avoiding understanding anything. But in real life, when someone says "Oh I understand it, just give me thirty minutes to solve it" and others "shit them out" in 5 minutes, it's usually the shitters who are ready to advance to the next level.

[the_gorilla]

> That's an odd complaint.

No it's not. I'll make it simpler. If you know the material really well but haven't memorized the problems, you will test poorly. If you memorize the problems and have no real understanding of the material, you will test well. This is obviously the opposite of what you want to test.