>be me, middle of class, mechanical engineering design, university.
>teacher writes up a problem, 4 formulas, paint by numbers
>plug it in, give the answer
>"I see I made it too easy", takes away all the numbers, replaces it with symbols, changes the question slightly
>wtf, this is easier, not harder
>spend 5 seconds writing it into my book, walk to the board and write it there, "this is it, right?"
>"I don't know, do you all agree?" he asks the class, I walk to my desk
>a minute goes by, students staring confusedly at the board as they try to work it out themselves
>another minute goes by, I ask "well this is it, right?"
>teacher says "I don't know", and he actually means it
>wut.jpg
>teacher spends another 2 minutes writing up the formulas trying to solve it, eventually trying to reverse engineer the formula given by the book to fit my answer.
>finally, "yup, that's the correct answer" says the teacher.
>none of the students have solved the problems themselves at that point

Every time when I was told I was gifted before, my immediate response was complete distrust of that person. I'm at my 3rd year at Uni, I'm fucking 30 years old.
Everybody seems to have some sort of algebraic aphantasia, they can't manipulate the equations in their heads. I don't know what to make of this.

How do I benefit from this? How do I use this? What do I do now?