I both agree and disagree. A university degree is basically a sort of intellectual cave diving exercise. You need to be comfortable exploring in the dark, and

I both agree and disagree. A university degree is basically a sort of intellectual cave diving exercise. You need to be comfortable exploring in the dark, and sometimes you need to hold your breath under water until you emerge on the other side of the tunnel. There may be no purpose at the end of a given cave. In fact most university courses are like this, you won't use the content later in life. Others can be abbreviated, but on purpose are not, precisely because we want to practice hard things. For instance why do we need to do arithmetic beyond the point where we understand the uses and limitations of a calculator? Similarly for calculus, why do more trig substitutions beyond where you understand how a symbolic calculator works? In the end the purpose isn't to have the knowledge you need, but to be able to find it. For instance, I didn't know anything about option math when I finished, so I read some books on my first job learned it that way. Having said that, I think the attitude of "why on earth do I need this" is unhealthy. It makes it hard to concentrate when you know that you can forget about it the moment the exam ends. Perhaps it's better to develop an appreciation that calculus is at the bottom of a lot of things, and might be a starting point for unknown adventures later on.