Ooo, do you knit everything through the back loop? That's how I learned, and it made things really funky for a while every time I tried to level up to a new kind of project. I've been relearning things in trial-and-error stages over the past year or so, but I also work in a yarn store and am surrounded by experts.

However, I still can't tell SSK from K2TBL. So... whatever works.