This is a core problem in education, BTW: people, regardless of age, are essentially unable to properly evaluate whether they actually learned something from e.g. a course they just completed, and what helped with these learning effects. Those after-course feedbacks mostly just reflect whether they liked the presenter and/or the group. This of course has problematic consequences if that after-course feedback is used as evaluation of the course itself, because it can penalize courses where people would actually learn - because learning sometimes simply isn't fun.
Yes, it is often a matter of sympathy, atmosphere and ambitions more than actual learning.
Many years ago as a grad student I was a teaching assistant.
One year I was instructing two classes.
One was an ordinary class. It was all very pleasant, cozy and relaxed. Students would often bake cake for the class.
But I had trouble teaching because most of them did not do any homework and did not read the textbooks much. They all liked me. One even said in class that he would try to get me again next semester, meaning that he knew he would fail the exam. Which most of them did.
The other class was a special class for students that had failed the previous exams and because the curriculum had changed this was their last chance. They were a lot more motivated. And they were quite critical about me as an instructor. At one point they even made a complaint about me be because I had tried to prove a theorem on the blackboard and failed because I made a silly mistake. They were absolutely right that I messed up that proof. But we did handle it in that same class and had a good discussion about that theorem and how to prove things. And their critical attitude kept me on my toes.
I worked hard preparing the classes. And the classes were focused and tense.
In the end, except for one that fell sick, everyone passed the exam with good marks.
It takes a huge level of maturity to know when you understand something. You have to take yourself away from how pleasant the interaction was, and ask yourself questions that are on the limit of what you think you can answer. That whole not-too-easy-or-hard balance is really difficult to nail down, especially if you have a grade depending on it. It's also hard when you have nothing but your own satisfaction depending on it, eg after you've graduated and are just reading for interest.
The entertainment aspect is hard to get away from. It's like when you watch a good documentary, you're in awe of whatever field it's about. But have you really learned much? Hard to say.
Kind of a super power of mine is that I am very good at knowing whether or not I actually know or understand something.
This made university pretty stressful: it was always on my mind how little I had yet retained and understood from my current courses; i'd only be happy when grinding material through my brain on my own (i.e. actually learning).
I have the same thing! I've always found it deeply perplexing to see people that don't understand something but think that they do. Particularly, because when you actually understand something, it's so obvious.
When I'm learning something, I have kind of a map in my head. I can just accurately keep track of the parts that are still fuzzy. In any subject, unknown unknowns are what will really trip you up. I think a big part of it is that I can use tiny context clues to predict and calibrate my understanding. Often, just knowing the NAME of a concept is enough for me to figure out what it's going to look like. (I did that with feynman path integrals for example.) SO I absorb those context clues and use them to try to keep some idea of what I DON'T know yet in that map.
In fact, I think it's closely tied with prediction in general. I remember in math, I'd take what we knew, or had been learning, and just take it to the absolute limits of my knowledge, or find it's absolutely limits until the idea breaks. I did that constantly. In doing so, I could often predict the next section of study. I think that habit gives you lots of practice in self-assessment of what you really know.
Conversely... when it comes to complicated subjects of complex systems like history/economics/geopolitics, where there is relatively poor feedback on "correctness" of ideas, I feel like ALL of my opinions are completely unfounded bullshit. People still seem to value them, but they have such a tenuous grip on reality.
I'd like to think I am good at it as well, but I doubt it. The number of times I've felt I've understood something, but then realized I could not answer follow-up questions or explain it properly to a third party, is uncountable.
