This is my experience as well. And unfortunately, many of my teachers feed into this. "Ok kids, today we're going to learn this new formula. You put a number in, do some arithmetic, and you get an answer out. I am not going to bother explaining the importance of this formula, how it came into existence, nor its practical application — likely because even I don't know. But what I do know is it's important because everyone says it is and it will be on the exam. Now get cracking." A parody of course, but I say captures the sentiment which completely drained my desire to learn math. I got good grades, but only after I learned to accept that it is futile to learn the importance of what I am learning and instead simply focus on rote memorization of solving the problem, even if I don't know why it works.