To be or not to be...technical

So, last night I started my photography class. I decided a few weeks ago that I really needed a class that would teach me how to use my new camera, because I am clueless! Mind you, the reason I signed up for the class was because the description said that it would be pretty dummied-down and would teach the basics of an SLR camera. Sounded just up my alley. When I got to class last night the first thing the teacher asked is "who in the class has had their camera for 2 years or more?" -- several hands raised. Next, "who has had their camera for 1 year or more?" -- more hands raised. "Six months?" -- few hands. Finally, "who just purchased their camera?" -- my hand goes into the air, I look around and see that only one other person in the room is with me (and she's about 85 years old). So, that set the tone for the rest of the two hours -- teacher teaching with the assumption that the majority of the class already knew quite a bit about their cameras and photography in general. I felt cheated, I must say, because I wanted the room to be full of dummies like me, and the teacher to pretty much spell things out with step 1: do this, step 2: do this. Maybe I was being naive. So, the whole night was spent with so much technical talk that I thought my head would explode into little camera-function pieces and me catching about 1/5 of it all! I am a bit frustrated. On the one hand, I know I need to learn this stuff so that I can take better pictures and learn how to manipulate my camera to take shots that I want. On the other hand, though, I hate how all the technical stuff seems to get in the way (at least when you don't get any of it) of why I really LOVE photography, and that is for the very, very simple reason that I just love taking pictures. I don't really care, at this stage of my game, why this setting will help in this lighting or why you need to adjust this to get this in your picture -- even though I know I should care about that! I hate feeling bogged down by all that techie stuff swimming in my head and just want to go out and capture moments. I guess this is supposed to help me catch the moments AND make them look better! I'm not giving up. I am going to study my manual this week and try to be better prepared for next weeks' class. In the meantime, I guess I will have visions of F-stop and aperature and histograms swimming in my head! Sometimes it's just easier being the dummie!