I am horrible at math, and never went very far into Calce, Trig and etc- simply what I had to do.
But through my studies elsewhere, I wound up studying what might be called 'foundations' of mathematics... which really doesn't need any notions from Trig, Calc etc. Its like I took an end run around all of that and wound up in an area of real and true beauty.
From there I actually started working backwards, picking up some linear analysis, statistics and etc... but then I finished grad school and never looked back.
If I had met the foundations earlier, I would have no-doubt ended up in love with the field of mathematics. This 'do the dumb stuff first' and 'pay your dues' notion of math instruction is probably a major deterrant to education. Logic applies everywhere, is the 'DNA' of math, and I think its where everyone should start.
DL
Off Topic » in reply to Attitude is everything
My epiphany was getting to computability, provability and abstract logic