A Rant on How Math is Taught (at least the math at my school)

I often hear that "math is hard" and "math is just knowing formulas and when to apply them" but I  also hear that "math is the secret to the world." (Obviously not word for word, but many different variations and forms of the same three statements). 

But to be frank—at least from my experience—the truth stands for only the first two quotes; math is indeed hard as fuck—that—and it's just knowing and applying a bunch of formulas. Or maybe I'm just salty that I'm not that great at math. And with that aside, I'm even saltier at the fact that I do not understand enough why's. (Like—seriously though, every time I ask my classmates questions regarding the specifics of this and the why's of that, they can never give me a satisfactory enough answer.) That and I'm also too scared to approach my teacher and bombard her with my fairly basic and simple questions. (Which totally leads to another flaw in the education system which is 'dumb questions' and the stigma around it but that's for another post—despite the fact that "there's no such thing as dumb questions"). 

Indeed more questions than answers in this world. 

But instead of relying on my teacher and classmates, I recently (just) started to research my own questions. At first, I was only intending to learn the nitty-gritty stuff of Limits (because I missed a question regarding it on my past test). But upon reading many answers to the "What is..." posts, I realized that it wasn't only limits that I don't understand, it's the rest of (basic, because I'm in AB) calculus. 

And you know what? The posters, with all their mindless ramblings and confusing answers, are right. 

The math taught in school is so compressed and refined into equations, formulas, and even more equations that, somewhere along the way, everything became rote. And when it came time to do college-level math, everyone struggles with grasping the higher-level concepts.

And upon doing more research and learning what math actually is; I sorta no longer want to pass the AP Exam—but that's a lie and a big 5 would definitely boost my small ego.