My biggest gripe in school and now isn't legibility, but wondering if the professor / author is using his Greek letters as some magic, universal constants or ju

My biggest gripe in school and now isn't legibility, but wondering if the professor / author is using his Greek letters as some magic, universal constants or just throwing them in as variables because it's "convention". Spend more time hunting down context and the "With {} as {}" section than understanding the equation.