I always needed practical examples, which is why it was helpful to learn physics alongside calculus my senior year in high school. Knowing where the physics equations came from was easier than just blindly memorizing the formulas.

The specific example of things clicking for me was understanding where the "1/2" came from in distance = 1/2 (acceleration)(time)^2 (the simpler case of initial velocity being 0).

And then later on, complex numbers didn't make any sense to me until phase angles in AC circuits showed me a practical application, and vector calculus didn't make sense to me until I had to actually work out practical applications of Maxwell's equations.