@semck

Pay not attention to atom. He suffers from the worst of childhood ailments: bad parenting. It's really not his fault.

@CM

Sorry I misunderstood you. So, you just have to make a choice: power through so you can move on to more interesting things or not. Only you can make that choice, although there are people to help you if you decide to continue on.

Something else you might want to do is simply go ask your Calc teacher why s/he thinks you did bad. Ask for some advice and mention you're considering possible going into a field with a lot of math, see their reaction, etc. If you have a decent teacher they will be more then willing to help you out and explain what they think you are doing wrong.

"I'm not sure how he can call something repetitive and unchallenging if he isn't able to actually do it."
Like I said, I can do 9 out of 10 of the homework problems. But even the ones I can't do, I don't really consider that challenging. Just hard and boring. There's a difference.

Challenging is like a problem I tried to do the other day. In my engineering class, our teacher was explaining the basic physics of rocket flight, but he decided to show the few of us who were in calculus the integral behind the equations he was showing us. My friends and I were trying to solve the integral, and that was kinda fun. We weren't able to solve it though, because it required an integration technique we hadn't earned yet. My friend had his older sister, who goes to UC berkeley, solve it.

"But even the ones I can't do, I don't really consider that challenging. Just hard and boring. There's a difference."

You need to get to where you can do those ones, though, and even do them quickly. Put on some classical music or somethign in the background to make it more enjoyable, if you need to, but do them.

In fact I'd say those are the #1 target problems that test-writers are going for. The ones that don't involve serious novel thought (since there's limited time) but which are among the hardest of a particular problem type (to make sure the people can do the hard ones).

"Like I said, I can do 9 out of 10 of the homework problems. But even the ones I can't do, I don't really consider that challenging. Just hard and boring. There's a difference."

Sure, but you're leaving gaps in your understanding. Also, if you can do 9/10 HW problems and fail an exam then something is wrong. Either you somehow got the answers without actually understanding or the HW didn't prepare you for the exam. You should ask your teacher where the discrepancy is. Have you reviewed the exam yourself and figured out the problems you couldn't do?

I got 25% on a math exam in gr. 10. Went on to study physics/engineering in university. The marks aren't a death sentence.

However, if you're disheartened about working through the math, the perhaps a math heavy subject isn't the best route.

@Yonni

LOL Got a 15% on my Electronics II midterm. Second highest grade in the class. If you're going to be an engineer, low grades are in your future.

This dude helped me pass Calculus in College. http://patrickjmt.com/