> the majority of my folks find Calc to be hard, very hard. I'm not even a middle of the bell curve kind of student, going as far as being outright rejected fr

> the majority of my folks find Calc to be hard, very hard. I'm not even a middle of the bell curve kind of student, going as far as being outright rejected from all of colleges I applied to. However, there is something I have learned over the years about learning hard topics: First, dive in and be totally confused. It doesn't matter if you do not understand anything. Your brain will still start to form relationships from what you took in. Revisit the topic again in a week, a month, whatever seems appropriate. You will probably still have a lot of confusion, but the idea is to just refresh those aforementioned relationships. Take a period of time away from it again, and by the third time you visit the subject it will "magically" make sense. But this does not really fit the traditional education model. If you try to revisit the topic in a couple of months, the course will probably be over. When you are directing your own learning, however, learning these hard topics really turns out to be not that difficult at all.