Similarly, very little of the trig and pre-calculus stuff that I had to learn in math class made any sense to me, until I either had to use it for drawing graph

Similarly, very little of the trig and pre-calculus stuff that I had to learn in math class made any sense to me, until I either had to use it for drawing graphics with QBasic in my programming class, or for a plethora of things in my shop classes.