A request for 3d designers/artists.

I tried CGCookie courses for shading/textures and they are decent at best, the courses explain the very basics but in the practical exercises they start adding lots of nodes they never explained.
It's like the math meme where they teach you "2+2=4" and the exam involves explaining every single Fermat's theorem.
In the newest iteration of their courses, many users complain the lecturer is just reading a script and doesn't know what she is doing.
Not only that, i don't think they have courses focused on blender simulations and geometry nodes.

So i am looking to learn shaders, textures, simulations and geometry nodes for blender.
Any help would be appreciated.

Apart of CGCookie all i could find were crappy "learn everything about geometry nodes in 20 minutes" youtube videos that rush through everything without any proper explanation so they can cram as much information as they can in those 20 minutes.
>Use Zbrush/houdini/etc
Not yet.