Most compositing courses are taught by people who've never had to make something look real.

They know the nodes. They know the workflow. But if you put them in front of a comp and asked them to build something a supervisor would approve, they couldn't do it. You can feel it in how they teach. Nothing is about seeing.

If your instructor can't show you work that makes you stop and wonder if it's a photo, they can't teach you what photorealism actually feels like. And that feeling is the whole job.