How are shell scripts applied in Computer Science?

I’m sort of in my first semester of CS classes, and am seriously loosing heart in my UNIX class. It seems really easy, but also I can’t see any point in it. Just a whole class teaching you things that would only take you a few minutes to find out yourself when necessity called.

My real question is this: Will I ever need to use shell scripts in real life? I want to work in software development eventually, but I just saw a really great job for which one of the requirements was knowledge of shell scripting, and I can’t see how that would be used. I would just like to know of a practical example of their use, maybe to help me be a little more motivated to learn.

Thanks.

-m