<p>I am not naturally gifted or intelligent and I fought tooth and bone to get into an decent university. However, I am doing my best (going to office hours, spending all my free time studying, forming study groups with friends, asking people for help) and I am still failing my tests and homework problems. How do I not feel sad or discouraged or doubt my intelligence? I feel like I should quit school even though I can't do anything else well. Even with school though, I feel like things are pointless sometimes and feel like I can't do anything right.</p>
<p>And the worst part is that whenever I start to fail, I doubt myself on future problems and so my overall results are marred from feeling down in the first place. I've gone through lots of peaks and valleys before, each time arising greater than the person I was, but I don't know if I can pull myself out of this hole I'm in.</p>
<p>I feel you bro. Take easier classes, at least for next term; it’ll boost your morale.</p>
<p>It’s probably not your intelligence that’s the problem, but your background. If you didn’t have a strong math background in high school, of course you would have trouble in college. Same with writing. Remember that you can be really smart and just have difficulty in a particular subject because you didn’t study it a lot. Also you are probably good at something, so go study that instead of something you’re bad at.</p>
<p>Also maybe try to study on your own because study groups don’t get stuff done a lot of the time. That being said, maybe your study group is different and you actually learn a lot from them.</p>
<p>I felt the same way when I switched majors from math to computer science. I coped by avoiding programming-intensive classes (which I’m bad at) and taking a lot of my requirements in theoretical computer science (which I’m good at). Play to your strengths! And don’t tell me you have none.</p>