Paz:
Thank you for responding timely and confirming our concerns.
This, in my opinion, is a classical problem that is often confronted by many chemical engineering students. Some professors and instructors, unfortunately, are either lackadaisical or simply LAZY when teaching the fundamentals of Unit Operations. Students cannot, by normal standards, be aware that there are certain routines, procedures, understandings, or habits cultivated by academia that are foreign or not understood by the general public. This creates a lot of misunderstandings or - worse - ignorance of what knowledge is being taught.
I personally have been the victim of such examples of bad teachings - some by graduate students used as lab instructors or lay teachers who really have little interest in the well-being and knowledge being passed on to undergraduate students. This type of "instructor" really has only interests in his/her own future and aspirations. Even some practicing engineers often acquire this type of lazy attitude when communicating with peers or associates. They, for example will fail to use the proper and specific units of process values - such as saying psi, instead of either psig or psia. Some people are simply naive and tend to believe that you and I can understand what they are thinking without them describing specifically what they mean. This, I believe, is the culprit in your specific case.
I would take the indicated instructor to task and insist that he/she specifically state what are the specific conditions of the feed in question - at the process conditions of pressure and temperature. This is a phase equilibria application (one that you will have to conquer in the near future, especially in your thermodynamics courses) and an important one to master when dealing with fluids at their phase boundaries.
I hope you capture and retain the importance of this aspect of specific and accurate communications in engineering.