I'm in grad school and this is also true of the sciences. I'll make a comment about how X is metaphor for Y, mostly as a way to solidify and arrange my brain to learn. For example: The Circle of Willis is a arterial structure in your brain that keeps blood moving even if there is a clot, I likened this to a set of resistors in parallel. Oh man, the looks... I felt like I had grown 10 heads. It's natural to me to want to tie things together, but for others, no way, you either have the language or you don't, the in words and shibboleths or nothing at all.