Till my senior year of HS, I thought math was easy, but not very interesting. This was basically for the reason you describe -- there's one obvious right answer

Till my senior year of HS, I thought math was easy, but not very interesting. This was basically for the reason you describe -- there's one obvious right answer, and a set of steps you can mechanically apply to reliably get there. When I finally reached the creative math classes[0], I was surprised to find that math could be so engaging (and difficult relative to all the previous courses). All math may ultimately have a right answer, but there's much more flexibility and even subjectivity as you progress That's also a big part of why I got into Computer Science. Computer Science[1] courses are basically a flavor of the interesting kind of math. I really enjoyed working through algorithmic and computability problems because it wasn't always obvious how I should approach them or if I'd even be able to figure them out. I think it's sad the vast majority of students will never even reach a math course where they aren't performing calculations that could trivially programmed into a computer. It seems like there should be a way to give students a taste of that earlier on, but I'm not sure what the best approach would be. 0: This kinda started with integrals in Calc II, but didn't get really interesting till the my first 3000-level University course on proof by induction and the like. 1: Not programming or engineering, although those can be fun in their own ways.