I understand the author's frustration. There are many teachers who simply don't have the ability or the desire to explain concepts - their attitude is simply "do like I do and you'll get the results I get". There are precious few teachers who will bother to explain the why along with the how, and even then you have to twist their arm to get them to make the effort.
I had my share of such lazy (and/or stupid) instructors. My solution was to say "ok, show me your method for solving this problem; I'll learn it because apparently this is as much as you know or choose to share". Then I would go get some books to understand the why of it. I hated this because of the duplicated effort and wasted time, but sometimes that's what you have to do to survive.
This poor guy set his expectations too high. Or else that was a really crummy college. In either case, what he needed was a good counselor, and it looks like he didn't get one.
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I understand the author's frustration. There are many teachers who simply don't have the ability or the desire to explain concepts - their attitude is simply "do like I do and you'll get the results I get". There are precious few teachers who will bother to explain the why along with the how, and even then you have to twist their arm to get them to make the effort. I had my share of such lazy (and/or stupid) instructors. My solution was to say "ok, show me your method for solving this problem; I'll learn it because apparently this is as much as you know or choose to share". Then I would go get some books to understand the why of it. I hated this because of the duplicated effort and wasted time, but sometimes that's what you have to do to survive. This poor guy set his expectations too high. Or else that was a really crummy college. In either case, what he needed was a good counselor, and it looks like he didn't get one.