I’m US based. I’ve been to Mexico, Italy, and Ireland. I still feel like a dumb American that thanks of Europe like Disney land. Like it’s just a place to take vacations and not a place where hundreds of millions of people live and work and have complete lives.
I don’t feel well traveled at all.
I graduated with a BS in electrical engineering in May of this year. We used Matlab in multiple courses in the program. We were encouraged to purchase the student version of Matlab. However, all three professors in the program were 100% ok with students using Octave or whatever software you wanted, as long as the work got done.
Your professor sounds like a dick.
If you use MATLAB software there is a FOSS alternative that can even run most M-files and uses mostly the same syntax.
GNU Octave
Cure for this: start singing “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield. Works every time.