I need some advice.
I am in the middle of the cross country phase of my training and I have suspended training.
During this cross country phase I have spoken to dozens of pilots and they all tell me the same thing:
"We all have to do this but you will never use it again" .. He is referring to top of climb, diversions, etc..
I keep asking why do we need to do this if I will never use it again? He keeps telling me that is the way they do it, its the way they have always done it. He is not sure why they do it, knows we won't use it but doesnt want to change.
He uses Foreflight and keeps reminding me that all this training that I am paying for is essentially worthless as I will never use it again.
So essentially he's telling you "you are paying me to waste your time."
Hmmm. I don't blame you for being discouraged.
I think all of these pilots are just being glib, though... it's like emergency procedures. Unlikely to be needed, but when needed, you have to know them! There's something they don't want to tell you; maybe because they've forgotten.
I got my ticket in '97, when GPS was still pretty exotic stuff, and there was nothing to run Foreflight on in the plane... and no Foreflight. But we had transponders, comm radios, VOR receivers, and even ADFs. Every other flight out of KTEB, I'd be told to "hold over Paterson" while waiting to get back in... guess what I used for my turn point? I knew what Paterson looked like, but it was a lot easier to find that NDB, and I figured that NDB was on the controller's overlay. All that clunky old nav gear was actually very useful, and a guy could get lazy. And LORAN... that was sheer luxury.
Even then, I was told that stuff like TOC calculations and figuring VFR diversions on the fly without navaids were probably never going to be needed, especially with the newfangled GPS and Internet tools coming onto the scene, but an understanding of these things
could come in handy, just like emergency procedures. Sure, it was also required as per the syllabus, but my instructors made an effort to show me the value of good old-school situational awareness, rather than the "this is pointless but we gotta do it" mentality. They would at least present it as a challenge, to polish my PIC attitude.
Like the TOC thing... yeah, it's a pain in the ass, especially if, like mine, your CFI already has you subtracting 1 gallon off the top for "ground ops, climb, etc". And unless you're climbing very high, it's unlikely that the wind-corrected heading will differ very much from cruise. And even without GPS or any other navaids, in VFR you end up visually correcting for drift anyway. and fuel calculation? Puh-leeze... four hours' endurance, and how many dual flights were even two hours? Even on my long solo XC, I knew before I sat down to plan that my planned round-robin would not put me in danger of burning reserve fuel. It was all kind of silly.
But some day you may need to make a flight that will use most of your fuel, with a fairly long climbout, or even a series of climbs and descents (to avoid clouds or find favorable winds). You may not have a mobile device or even a piece of paper with all the numbers available. I'm not suggesting you whip out the E6B in flight, but if you're not in the habit of at least
thinking about this stuff, it will be harder to
understand what to do, should you need to do it.
Diversions... I guess if you have complete confidence in your onboard gadgetry, it's hardly worth thinking about. Let's face it, even if you're just squawking and talking, you don't need to figure out much by yourself if a diversion becomes necessary. But when a diversion is necessary, for weather or fuel or an emergency, I think it's foolish to be up there without at least a rudimentary knowledge of how to guesstimate heading, time and descent profile with the most basic tools: compass, clock, chart and knowledge of airplane performance. I know the gadgets are less likely to fail you than the engine, but that's not the point. All the technology in the world will not help you much if you don't have an interest in and understanding of your situation... hell, some pilots can barely divert safely with ATC vectors over the radio. And pilots fly into terrain and bust airspaces in good weather with a working GPS right in front of them. That's sad, and it's because they just aren't thinking about what's going on. The fist link in the chain is always a failure to understand what's going on, or where they are. They are "behind" the gadgets, just as a pilot can get "behind" the airplane.
Anyway, I never saw these exercises as a huge burden, really... but every pilot is different. I'm a freak; I actually enjoy thorough planning and old-school figuring in flight (although I also do fine on casual short trips without anything more than pilotage and knowing the tanks are full).
Sounds like that is not your bag at all, and I accept that.
But you might see it differently, though, if you can find an instructor who can present such skills to you as something worth learning, not just a bunch of FAA-mandated hurdles that you have to jump over to get your certificate. Or find your own way to appreciate these exercises... "PIC" should mean you are ready for challenges, IMHO, not merely ready to tell the airplane where you want to go and have it take you there.
Stall practice is a fair analogy: I often hear "Damn, that's scary stuff- I already know how to avoid stalls; why do I have to demonstrate full stalls and recovery?" If you think you could (and should) convince such a pilot that stall recovery is worth practicing, you should be able to see why all this fussy nav stuff is worth practicing.
Is that were you level off at your cruise altitude? 
