u/Valuchian

I am about to finish my Junior year of Aerospace Engineering and it feels like every single semester there is atleast one class that basically takes something I spent months practicing previously and tell me that's actually bad and would never be used in industry or resaearch. Then goes on to show me a more complete version and inevitably this too will be replaced using the exact same phrase of "nobody would ever use this".

Is there a point in which these classes do teach me something i could theoretically turn around and use without needing to worry about some obscure version of the course work being the actual form required? I will happily go all the way to PhD if i need to but i am at the point where i literally don't trust my own knowledge because of how many times i was taught sonething and told it was terrible by the next level course.

Edit: Grammar

I was watching StarTalk and it was mentioned that when an Electron achieves a certain energy level it becomes a new particle the Muon and then finally the Tau.

This sparked the question in me that I do not fully understand how a lepton/electron can absorb or emit photons to gain higher energy levels. I mostly only saw this being discussed when talking about energy inside an atom and the specific shell the electron is in. Is the creation of higher order leptons similar to this but without an atom being involved? Or is there something else happening that allows for electrons to gain "energy".

Thank you ahead of time for anyone who takes the time to offer their knowledge in this