No one, and let me repeat that, no one "gets" linear algebra, differential equations, or frequency domain on the first pass. It takes years to absorb and multiple passes...

I don't understand the point of this comment. On the one hand you're trying to encourage people by saying "don't feel bad you didn't get it the first time" but then you throw a mountain more work/terms/books at them? You think it's encouraging to a student to hear that if they didn't succeed in this robotics class because the LA coverage wasn't great ...... they should go take quantum computing, control theory, abstract algebra classes?