I took the introductory fluids course at my university but eventually gave up as I could never figure out the right approximations to take and I couldn’t build

I took the introductory fluids course at my university but eventually gave up as I could never figure out the right approximations to take and I couldn’t build the intuition. It didn’t help that I was paired with a guy I didn’t like for homework. Some of my friends did like it though (one got to explain how he spent his summer in the maths department learning about fingering.) After I graduated, I returned to visit some friends doing master’s degrees and it was only at this point that I learned there was a moderately large laboratory under the maths department doing real physical experiments with actual fluids.