Angular way vs jQuery way

I really appreciate the new course on AngularsJS here at Treehouse. Before starting the course, I was really passionate to learn the framework or at least get to know how modern MVC architecture works in applications. After completion of several steps in the course, I could clearly see the benefits developers can gain from two-way data binding and declarative style of programming. However, as I've started to think more in terms of this framework I have also noticed that some simple things become very complex. Angular forces me to manipulate elements in an application in a very different way, than I would using jQuery for example. Right now I am not talking about simple actions that could be done with "ng-click" and assigned function. For example, I am concerned about DOM manipulation workflow. As a tree house student I have built up the same to-do application with pure Javacript and later rewrote it in jQuery. The logic of adding new entries to ToDo list was very easy - find/select the element you want to manipulate with and then execute an action. I would call it a straightforward way. In Angular I have to split everything in different dimensions, even the simplest tasks. It seems like if you are not developing next Airbnd or Virgin America (check out their latest update btw) type of application, you will end up doing more and actually writing more code with angularJS. This is probably not a very structured question itself, but more of a personal expression and concern about where to move next and not to find myself devoting much time to the stuff I would not use anyway (And with angular this worry is very feasible, because you are also expected to dive into MongoDB, Express and Node). It's fun, because now I start to understand why people sometimes have such a strong preferences over particular technologies.

// Update I forgot to say that the course itself is really great and I like it a lot :D Huston Hedinger