It depends on the language you’re coming from and whose IPA transcription you’re learning. I’ve got a Bachelor’s in English linguistics so I’ve initially learned about IPA in the context of the English language. Being a native German, it was a bit difficult to get into it and remember all “special” characters that are exclusive to English and don’t appear in German or rather “uncharacteristic” realisations of German phonemes.

In my second Bachelor’s, I studied IPA in a German phonetics class and actually were really fine in that class - got used to the character since most German phonemes match with their IPA counterparts.

In my current SLP apprenticeship, I’d wager that I’m best in class in terms of IPA: transcribing utterances phonetically and reading IPA.

All of that to say, it’s weird at first but since German and English share the same language family and both languages’ letters match the IPA versions, it’s quite manageable, I’d wager. Welcoming any other opinions :)