Hey thanks so much...
yeah
it seems as though my professor wasn't quite aware of this issue when he suggested i set everything up while being at Play every Frame, play by frame: 10.

when you said "2. So, if you are essentially "skipping ahead" 9 frames to see the next part of the simulation, it may break, not work at all, or give you false simulation data."
yeah thats what's happening.

however i'm not sure what you mean by:
"you can reset your playback by to 1, and set your actual frame length to only 30 frames, as that is all you are interested in seeing, and hare happy with anyway"
Which specific options are you talking about here?

I tried to bake the animation at every 10 frames ....which nicely made all the little keyframes, and then tried to render it and it didn't work. sigh