I started to use bitcoin 2 years back when I saw that my friend was earning from signature campaign and faucets so I asked him how he is managing to do that and he showed me the different ways to earn it.
I started late than you,may be just below i year ago i came to bitcoin world but same as you as my friend recommended it who was using faucets and also i came to this forum bit late after wasting some of my months on faucets.
I think at primary stage we all started our journey in bitcoin by earning from faucets as it was easy and we were not aware about the other ways to earn them and after knowing different ways we felt that we have wasted so much time behind faucets.