I agree with the prof. This is grad school. "Plug and chug" teaching of engineering is actually outdated even for undergrads. I've been preaching this for over 20 years, but things move at a glacial pace in education. (Yes, there is a joke there about receding recently.) If it is "plug and chug" then it probably fits on a floppy and floppys have been outmoded for a good long time. You don't want an education that is so easily mimicked with a simple computer program. This course should not be about getting numerical answers. This course should be about getting a deep understanding of the subject matter.

Real thermo is beautiful and elegant. And it is the only "classical" pillar of physics that is still standing. Don't think about the course for learning how to analyse mixtures of gases with different phase diagrams that are being cooled (even though you should be learning this!), but rather as getting to the real meaning of the first and second laws as well as the reason for the zero-th law and third laws.