I hated math. Absolutely loathed it. I had a terrible algebra teacher (8th grade) that left me a gap I never truly closed until college.<p>However, the 'lights' finally came on in my senior year of high school. I took an experimental trigonometry course, instead of calculus. This course focused on the application of trigonometry to real life problems.<p>It was by far the best class I've ever had, and it opened me up to understanding the application of ALL of the math that I had been taking for 12 years. It was truly seminal to me. That I had gone 11 years without ever being taught how to actually apply those principles is, in retrospect, mind boggling.