For me, the takeaway was that finding the Ørberg book later in life made me WANT to go out and read some latin texts. The Latin instruction in grammar school did absolutely NOTHING in this regard, sad to say.

I feel pretty strongly that treating Latin as a living language would have enabled me to go much farther, without necessarily spending more time on it.

As an aside - we probably agree more than we disagree, but I feel talking about the importance of drilling grammar just recalls the Monty Python sketch from Life of Brian, and not in a good way :)