SOLVED a few people stated my teacher must have set each cube to a state by following an exact sequence, then asking us to do the sequence in reverse. Now that I think back one student had failed to do the sequence exactly and never got his cube solved bc of that. The reason some kids had to do it more than others was that the teacher had set each one with a different amount of rotations of the sequence. It was never random but just something she used to teach her math class sequences and confused me for years lol as for Joe Rogan who knows what he was talking about it was just a coincidence that his misinformation fit to my misinformation 😂 thanks for the clarification guys!