Almost exact same here, except I failed college calculus - twice. It's always been a sore point for me that people who are obviously not as 'smart' as I am somehow all managed to pass it - I couldn't even understand it. Can I lay a little blame on bad professors? perhaps. others complained about the profs too, but ... they still managed to grok enough to pass.

I only managed to satisfy degree requirements by taking 'logic' (a philosophy class) instead of calculus. I was warned off trying this route by a few people though, as it was "hard". I'd been hobby programming for... 10 years at that point - there's little about 'logic' that could possibly be 'hard' in a logic 101 class, so I passed by doing something I was naturally good at. I simply couldn't afford (financially) taking calculus another 2-3 times to keep trying to pass.

It's still a sore point even now... 20+ years later, and a source of secret (perhaps not so secret now that I post this!) shame. :(

I'd never even had to try at anything (except music, perhaps) until well in to high school, at which point I'd mostly just given up. I scored in the top 2% of the ACT test (back when it was scored differently, in the 80s), and I'm not actually 100% sure I finished all the questions - I know I didn't study for it, nor was I particularly well rested. Yeah, as someone else wrote, schools are simply not oriented towards helping 'gifted' students, assuming that they're already 'ahead' of others, and seem to be left on their own - I know I was.