Quantum Uncertainty

I decided to go ahead and take physical oceanography, and it looks like it's going to be a real cotton candy class. It's being taught purely descriptively, for a bunch of atmospheric science majors mostly. Math models also looks like it'll be very easy. I'm sure partial differential equations will be OK, based on the professor, whom I had for ordinary differential equations.

Electromagnetic theory will be a ton of work, but it's quantum mechanics that has me worried. It's being taught by a theoretician, and they're all pretty nuts. Class is an 80-minute uninterrupted stream of consciousness and, being a theoretical physicist, the stream of consciousness is in the form of advanced math and formula derivations. One of his big things is that we should never look up anything -- like an integral or a trig identity. Apparently theoreticians consider this to be something that only experimentalists and, worse yet, engineers and other low-lifes, need to do. According to the doc, theoreticians take pride in doing all their own math, from scratch, the same way experimentalists take pride in designing their own instruments.