I don’t know if this type of post is allowed and just letting you know in advance that this post is going to reek with self-pity.
I’m currently in my second year of community college and I want to major in math. I’m already significantly behind compared to my peers who were interested in math in middle school or younger. I only found it interesting and had thoughts of pursuing it the summer before starting college.
Thing is, I just suck at math. In high school, I got a 450 on the math portion of the SAT. I was meant to take remedial algebra classes before starting at a different uni which is why I chose to attend community college instead.
I took precalculus and passed with an A and B (it was split into two parts. The first part was more like algebra based and the second was more trigonometry based). I could talk about my grades in calc 1 and 2, but I don’t feel like they’re an indicator of knowledge. Just tells me that I did a decent job of studying and memorizing before tests rather than understanding. Hell, I don’t even remember some stuff I learned in precalculus.
This all sucks because I truly wish to major in math and even get my PhD. It’s just so discouraging because everyone I see is good at math and is significantly ahead of me. Plus they were all good at math in high school even though most like to think otherwise.
I know what I have to do and I know despairing about it won’t change my situation. I do plan to work towards my goal, but I just mean to express how hopeless it feels.
I’ll be a calc 3 student reviewing algebra in trigonometry again in my second year of college while everyone else is taking proofs or real analysis and doing undergraduate research.
Do you have any words of advice?