I’m a civil engineer. Growing up I always thought (and my grades confirmed) that math was my worst subject. When it came time to take my SAT, I got the same score in math and English...twice; total score back then was 1220, but I think they’ve since changed the scoring method.
I hated geometry, got a D one grade period and Bs and Cs the other. I went ahead and signed up for honors Algebra II; had to work my butt off and still barely pulled B/Cs. Which set me up for some regular everyday math class my senior year. My Algebra II teacher wouldn’t recommend me for trig & analytic geometry because of my grades. I sat through a week of that (I thought of it as remedial) math class my senior year and couldn’t stand it; biggest bunch of morons in that class that I had ever seen in my high school career. I talked my mom into signing an override so I could take trig & analyt. Again worked my butt off, but pulled A/Bs. Best thing I ever did for myself in high school. And I guess I did it because I was ashamed to be in that “remedial” math class that I could have coasted through. Amazing what a bit of shame and some hard work can accomplish.
I’m a civil engineer, too. Struggled through all of my math classes in high school except geometry (for some reason I was so good at it that I practically could have taught the class myself). And yet I eventually understood all of it . . . it’s just that I was kind of like a year behind schedule. I could have aced Algebra I if I had taken a final exam in the middle of Algebra II, I finally understood Algebra II during my trigonometry/pre-calculus class the following year, etc. I think it’s because I never took to learning those subjects when they were “book subjects,” but everything clicked once I was in a situation where I had to know them almost by second nature in order to deal with another subject matter.