one of the most singular moments of my life was when my (amazing) high school physics teacher told us: Physics is unlike any other topic you'll learn. Other topics there's a lot of studying for memorization. Physics is a lot more like kung fu. You need to interpret the meaning of these physical laws and develop an intuition.

How right he was. I think I had a genetic predisposition (dad is a rock star engineer). But that interaction positively influenced my life more than he probably realized.

Side note: that physics teacher was a maniac. He would play 80s music in class, make inapporpriate jokes. Let us do crazy impractical and messy experiments. He also had a weird OCD tick where no matter how far he was from a yellow light he'd try to make it.