[cgriswald]

> I feel as if reading proofs and doing problem sets in math books is just manipulating symbols in well-known ways without really understanding intuitively why something must be true.

I have a few thoughts about this. The first is that it is largely up to the learner. Sure, you can just symbolically manipulate things with no real understanding, but no one says you have to stop there (and arguably that's what you should be working on when you read the proof).

The second is that a lot of times the intuition comes later. There was a joke in my school (and I presume others) that you learn algebra in calculus, calculus in DEs, etc. It takes a while to develop that intuition and sometimes just doing it frequently is part of what it takes. I think of it like learning music theory but not really getting it until you've gotten proficient at an instrument.

The third is that some math is just like that. There might be someone somewhere who has some type of intuitive understanding of it, but they are an outlier.

That said, the best learning I've done in mathematics is to take a book without answers in the back and work through it with other people. It's difficult, but very rewarding to really grok the topic and be confident in your answer; and having people you have to explain your solution to helps tremendously.