What to do??

I swear that every time I went to write a paper in high school there was some new format or citation method that I had to do. One professor would mark me down if I had punctuation in the citation, while another would indicate it was correct to have it there. No two papers were the same! I think I even played around with footnotes for one particular paper. Why wasn't there one way to do things? Looking back, I think my English teacher my junior year was on the right track with MLA, but how was I supposed to know what it was? It was never consistent enough with other teachers for me to learn it properly. College was better though. I became aware that there actually was a proper way to cite and format papers, that it wasn't just dependent on the whims and preferences of my current professor. It seemed as if my confusion would end! Hooray! And yet... my confusion came back when I began my zoology classes. There wasn't "One Citation Method to Rule Them All." The citation for these papers was different... again! I felt I was back to the ways of not knowing how to cite my paper unless I was shown by my professor what s/he wanted. The light dawned this semester when the words "MLA" and "APA" came face to face. So there are TWO Citation Methods to Rule Them All! Who knew? Then I wondered, “Why had I not known about this before?” I think along the way, these words were mentioned to me, but never explained properly. I cherish those little brochures. They explain so much!  The madness and confusion of why I did some things for this class one way and some things in another class this other way has now dissipated. There’s still so much I don’t know, but at least now I understand the basics.