[mooki]

What really got me was the lack of context. Here's some math - learn this stuff. Had the teacher just taken a few minutes to explain "look these equations are used in machine learning and powers google", that might've ticked your interest. Instead you developed this suspicious mindset where you couldn't really tell if they were wasting your time or not (which they often were).

It gets even worse because you spent six years in grade school grinding long division (oh god) then finding out it's almost useless. The introduction of more interesting math times out well with the rebellious phase where you stop trusting adults.

Only reason I ever got into math was programming. I'm just so happy none of the highschool computer teachers knew how to program and had us memorizing MS Word instead, because I'm sure they would've ruined that to.

As a tangent I was talking to a friend who studies astronomy. She does math for fun, but haaates programming and sees it as dull busywork. Her first introduction to it was through school and it's all "punch in these numbers and see what it does".