Until I was about 8 years old I had no opinion one way or another about math. Then my dad started forcing me to do times tables at home because they weren't forcing me to do them at school. I'm actually quite thankful, because even though my dad did this in a tyrannical way, I actually grew to love math. The highest level of math that I've taken is calculus in college. I plan to take a few more math courses before my time at college is over, if I can afford it, because I really love math.
What's scary is that I also really like English, and I've even recieved "honorable mention" for some of my essays. It's exactly like Medusa99 said: just do what the teacher told you to do. I remember that in my highschool English III AP class, the teacher asked us to write an essay analysing one of Emerson's essays. A friend of mine showed me his essay so that I could proof-read it, and as I read it, I noticed that it had absolutely nothing to do with the analysation of any Emerson essay ever written. It seemed that either my friend wasn't paying any attention whatsoever to the teacher when she told us what to write, or he's simply a dolt (I've known him for about four years now, and I can safely say that he is a dolt). Paying attention in class has a lot to do with your success in an English class. Also having a competent English teacher helps a lot. For my Freshman English course in high school, I had a football coach who was doubling as an English teacher. This guy wasn't exactly stupid, but he wasn't a master of English either. He would just rant on about how cool the Illiad is and the Odyssey and all that, but he would never explain anything, and the descriptions for the assignments were always vague--you can guess that he simply gave everyone good marks. If that's the only kind of English teacher you've ever had, then I can understand why you'd have a difficult time in English courses.
In college, my Freshman English course was pure crap as well, but my sophomore English course was much better, and was actually taught by someone with a Ph. D.
Needless to say, I received an "A" in that class. I also got an "A" in my calculus class. I have the transcript to prove it
