Rachael,
It's not cheating, as long as you understand what the camera is doing, and know what the effect of using the camera's chosen settings are going to be. You say you've done a course, and read some books, so I expect you know what is going to be the result of using different shutter speeds and lens apertures. As long as you know what's going to happen,
and you are happy with the settings chosen, it doesn't matter if you dialled them in, or the camera picked them.
I use fully program mode on my camera almost exclusively, but I also make extensive use of the program shift feature to make sure I'm using the setting I want to to achieve the result I'm after. As I explained in this thread:
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...read.php?t=125
There's a whole host of different ways to get the exposure right for any given lighting conditions. As long as you understand the impact of the settings used, feel free to use any way you like to achieve them.
If you don't feel like using all the different modes on your camera, try using the program shift feature first. As an exercise, why not stick your camera on a tripod, point it at a tree in the garden (if you have one), and take a variety of near identical pictures, but vary the program shift. Look at the results and evaluate the differences between the pictures.
As another experiment, put your camera on a tripod again and take pictures of cars driving down the road. Again, use the program shift and study the results. As long as you understand the impact of the settings used, it's not a cheat to let the camera pick them.
You may find the other stickies here:
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...isplay.php?f=6
useful.
Regards,
Duncan