The only reason Calculus seems so dry is that the ones teaching it are not very competent and don't understand the subject quite well.

During my school I'd ask teachers all about limits and why we need it and their attitude was - Don't get too involved - here are the formulas, go learn them and solve the exercises.

I later discovered that there were some amazing applications of limits (calculus) but wasn't taught the way they were meant to. This is the reason why I never found Calculus to be interesting.