...

Lazy, was it?  Did you try cash inducements, or
threats of restrictions of liberty?  That often scares
input methods into line..

Or, to put that another way, please be clear, specific
and *precise* with all code and test output.

Otherwise you might get suggestions like..

Change the ',' to a '.' on line 46.

This is known as a 'usenet newsgroup', just in case
there is any confusion.

(chuckle) Define 'flame'?

I've done about three in my lifetime, but have been
accused of hundreds.

But to ge to the meat of your query, I generally
prefer a JOptionPane for quick input from the CLI.
It won't work in 'old java', but that usually does
not matter.

OTOH, I think it would be far more productive (and
instructive) to figure out why the teacher's method
did not 'work', so..  Back to you.

Andrew T.

   The reason you've seen a number of different ways to do this is that
there are a number of different ways to do it, and they each have their own
quirks. As Andrew suggested, it's probably best if you do it the way the
teacher wants you to do it, or else you may run into problems in future
assignments when the quirks of the teacher's way won't match up with the
quirks of the way you end up using.

   comp.lang.java.programmer is a newsgroup, so you might want to read
http://kb.iu.edu/data/abcy.html

   - Oliver