I've believed since college that math is the worst taught of all academic subjects. I never had a math professor that engaged the class, and practical applications were never mentioned.

Even worse the language of math was never adequately explained. You were expected to learn the meaning of some new squiggle or greek letter by... its context? Symbols and terms you'd never seen before were just thrown at you without explanation. Definitions when given sounded circular or were given in terms of other things that had never been defined clearly.

I had one professor who just turned his back to the class and wrote things on the board. Students were meant to just magically understand.

I'll never forget in year one of college being absolutely stuck in calculus. I called up my dad and he tried to help me a bit, then he stopped and said: "you know what a derivative is, right?" I said no, not really. They tried to explain in class but it didn't click. He said "a derivative of a function is the rate of change of that function." I thought for a second and then said "thanks, now I understand calculus." I was un-stuck instantly. My professors never explained it that clearly.

Later on I took classes in things like population genetics and evolutionary dynamics. The professors of those classes explained the relevant math better than my math professors did to the point that if I'd taken those classes first I would have done better in the math classes that were their prerequisites.