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My math teacher was teaching us Trigonometry without ever showing the unit circle, and the class was completely befuddling to me and other students. This was pre-internet, and I stumbled across the unit circle in a book and the meaning of sine, cosine, etc. on it - and was like a huge revelation to me and others.

I've enjoyed trig since, and one of the few math topics I continue to use to this day.

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I remember just learning to code at a young age, but not knowing trig or seeing how it applied because I only knew it as being about triangles.

I had learned to use some game graphics library (specifically DJGPP with Allegro, coding in C) and I was trying to make a 2d spaceship game, think like asteroids, where you can turn the ship and apply thrust. I couldn't figure out how to take the angle the ship was facing and get a direction to move. Basically I needed to understand the unit circle. I eventually found what I needed probably on some old internet forums. From that point on, trigonometry really started making sense to me.

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