I am also a geology student and I think in most universities you ' re left to self educate a large deal of your knowledge . University programs are not perfect in their preparations , especially due to time constraints and varying degrees of math ability in students , so you have to fill in the gaps yourself . I youtubeinternet surf a lot of extra material that spans memorization bridges in textbookslectures that partially review reading material . Although I can only speak of my experience , I would imagine this is a problem in most universities as my university ' s program ranks highly amongst most US News , at least as far as you can take rankings seriously Its definitely frustrating in my opinion , but I find it difficult to learn everything thoroughly and cover the vast array of topics in each classes subfield so I understand why the programs operate as they do .