I went through this phase of the British school system some 14 years ago, just as the AS/A2 exams were being introduced. I'm a very technically minded person, b

I went through this phase of the British school system some 14 years ago, just as the AS/A2 exams were being introduced. I'm a very technically minded person, but I found school's treatment of these subjects to be intensely boring. I found it hard to pay attention and not be distracted by some more interesting or immediately rewarding passtime such as programming. While much of the A-level material is presented in a tedious manner, there are other books and sources available beyond your curriculum and I encourage you to seek these out. Applied topics such as computer science and engineering simply assume that you have a good grasp on the fundamentals. Books such as The New Turing Omnibus give you a taste of lots of topics, find some you like and dig deeper. Try and find some exciting, applied use of the boring school math, or chemistry, or phyisics. Find books and resources which guide you through learning rather than just reading Wikipedia. In summary, try to find the cool things that can be accomplished with the fundamentals you learn at school and you'll be more motivated to work through the tedium. Don't be afraid of "degree level" texts. Try to stay away from any programming that involves drudgery and focus on enlightened, mathematically-inclined tasks: learn Haskell, implement fundamental algorithms, find hard problems like SAT, fourier transforms, optimisation. Find something which requires the skills you learn at school but which is exciting enough to hold your attention. Do lots of little things.