'What did you study in your undergrad?' - Computer Science. I study applied math and physics in my spare time - I'm currently teaching myself quantum field theory and other topics. For the most part - they're incomprehensible to an average person which is why I'm so passionate about doing what I'm doing - all of this stuff is extremely simple underneath but we humans find ways to make it complicated. Why not untangle that complexity and simply explain things in a clear and intuitive manner? Also - your comments on your undergraduate ease of grasping Maxwell's equations usually don't apply to everyone. Many professors don't sketch out what they mean and many books don't go through the fundamentals that students need in order to grasp what they mean. This guide is supposed to give someone a good background on 1) what they need to understand in order to grasp the equations and 2) what the equations actually mean in clear human language. Hopefully this helps - I also haven't had a chance to read Jackson but he's been mentioned so many times that right now I'll make a note to actually read the book and see how well he explains the concepts and see if I can maybe find other ways of making things simpler.
I am happy that you are studying math+physics as a hobby. And I will say once again, that you distilled the conceptual parts of EM in the guide very well.
I will also agree with you that many professors don't teach well. I was a physics prof for a few years, and it is difficult to distill stuff well. Not everyone has the skill, passion and the job incentives to do it well. I was lucky enough to be graced with profs who did.
I am glad that you have the passion for this. I will say this though, that once you become a formal teacher (school/university), then it becomes clear to your that your responsibility is not complete until your students have the skills to use the concepts that you are teaching them. Skill here means being able to model actual physical systems and get both the behavior and numbers out. When teaching a course, you have limited contact time with students and students have limited total time to spend on the course. You have to balance teaching conceptual understanding and modelling skills in that time. That balance is extremely difficult to attain, the reasons for which will easily fill a small book.
You can go all in on concepts, and what happens is that within a few months students have completely blanked out on everything, because you need the mathematical framework and have solved difficult problems for things to stick in your brain long term. And conversely teaching only maths is terrible because no one knows and what and why.
