While I can relate to your complaint that some steps were a bit too simple to include... The point of all those steps was precisely to show that you hadn't memo

While I can relate to your complaint that some steps were a bit too simple to include... The point of all those steps was precisely to show that you hadn't memorized the results. At the risk of overly simplifying high school maths (it's hard if it's new) I would say that in high school the math is quite basic. You could pretty much remember the first step, not get most of it in between, and still produce the right answer because you remember the answer format. It's just not feasible to have a individual discussion with every student to see if they really understood the material. Requiring students to include the steps in between is a way to prevent memorization, although maybe not the best way for each student. It's good that the same thinking served you well later on though!