[Joe G.]

I'll have to echo the comments about not giving up on school. As a recent victim of this, give your teachers another chance. I've been in your exact spot: struggling grade-wise with an introductory topic that I thought I was "above," and wanting to move onward. Turns out, although maybe I knew a bit more than my grade suggested, I was far from a master, or even fully prepared to move onward and upward. You'll be surprised at how much you were missing out on when you'd "had enough" of it. Give high school another shot, and make the best of it.

And this takes motivation on your part. Only the most skilled teachers make it easy for students to learn through self-discovery. But good students can pull self-discovery from a non-ideal environment. Try it out. You may surprise yourself. Ask questions. Why are we learning this? What are the applications? The teachers will probably be happy to see someone care like this.

The bottom line is, any school, high school or college, is what you make of it. If you have the mindset of it as a place to learn to take tests, then you will see it as a place where you learn to take tests. If you open your eyes and look for greater learning opportunities, you'll find some.

Contrary to what you've said, college is not a magic-end-all-treasure-trove of knowledge. It too is what you make of it. Think back. In 8th grade, did you have high hopes for high school, thinking that it would open a whole bunch of new doors? No matter where you are in life, new doors in education are only available to those who look for them.

As to your case in pre-calculus, my advice is, never give up on a subject you initially set out to learn. Never burn a bridge when it comes to your education, intending to simply leap across the gap. The gap may be bigger than you thought. I can't speak for college admissions staff, but I'd take a student with a bunch of Cs over one with several As and several Fs, because the C student didn't give up. The A/F student only excelled at what they were already comfortable with.

And go ahead and watch the MIT lectures on your own time. But a word of warning. It may not seem fair, and ultimately it isn't, but colleges will measure how much you know, first and foremost, by how much your high school tells them that you know.