Learning SEO through real projects instead of courses - anyone else feel this way?

I wasted so much money on SEO courses when I started out. Watched hours of content, took notes, felt like I understood everything. Then I got my first actual client and realised I knew nothing.

The course taught me what a meta description is. The client taught me that writing one that actually gets clicks is a completely different skill.

The course taught me about backlinks. The real project taught me that getting even one decent backlink is painful and nobody replies to your outreach emails.

The course said "do keyword research." The project taught me that half the keywords with great volume have zero buying intent and ranking for them means nothing.

I've learned more from messing up on 3-4 real projects than I did from any course. The mistakes teach you faster because they cost you actual results and sometimes actual clients.

Anyone else feel like courses only gave you the vocabulary but the real understanding came from doing the work?