My introduction to calculus was “Calculus Made Easy” by Silvanus P. Thompson and I always liked math profs who actively worked to show math for what it is: useful, beautiful but not about the symbols or the jargon. “Any fool can calculate!” I think is what he says in the book.

I did some math in college and when I started knowing how to analyze the behavior of functions (and developing the mental math tools to imagine what they look like without having to actually draw them) that’s when I felt like I was kinda getting it