You can't take the "I wish they had taught me X in school" genre too literally. Often what it really means is "it's too bad X can't really be taught in school,

You can't take the "I wish they had taught me X in school" genre too literally. Often what it really means is "it's too bad X can't really be taught in school, but must be learned through experience", "it's too bad that the typical school contains very few people who understand X well enough to teach it", and/or "it's too bad that, when they told me X in school over and over again, I was so young and inexperienced and lacking in context that I didn't really grasp the importance of what they were saying". What it doesn't really mean is "they should simply start a one-semester course in X and then all the new grads will be much smarter". Why do we phrase our essays in this manner? Optimism. Optimism and marketing, which often go well together, like chocolate and peanut butter. "Ten things that you could learn from me today instead of spending ten years learning them the hard way" is a good sales pitch. "Ten things that you will spend five minutes reading, but will not truly understand, and then you'll still have to spend ten years learning them the hard way, but at least when you learn them you will already know the words for them" is not as good. ;)