You don't need theory to learn fingerstyle though, travis picking and stuff like that is basically a skill to be learned by repetition like riding a bike. Your teacher can't put the time in for you, it sounds like she's just pointing you to the fastest path towards the ultimate goal of being able to play fingerstyle. The good thing bout fingerstyle is that, one day it just clicks and you can just do it, and your 'feel' can be applied to an infinite number of different patterns.