Difficulty progression Memes

Ah, the classic academic bait-and-switch. Class: "Here's how to shift an automatic car." Homework: "Now try this manual transmission." Exams: "Pilot this entire spacecraft with no prior training and save humanity." Ten years into my career and I'm still waiting for someone to explain why I needed to implement a red-black tree from scratch when in reality I just Google "how to center a div" every other day.