TITLE: Soft Question Is it normal that a person who loves doing high school math but hates university math?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: I used to love doing math problems ever since elementary to high school. I wasn't always the brightest student in class but I always loved doing math problems. I didn't always achieve the perfect score, but my math grade wasn't the worst. During high school, I literally took every single math class that's offered in my high school as long as I can get it to fit into my schedule (AP Comp Sci(4), AP Statistics(4), AP Calculus BC (5), etc.) I enjoyed doing AP Calculus BC A LOT and I thought I will keep enjoying math since multi-calculus is taught in college and stuffs.
I then went to college in Europe and started to take required math classes for my major. But literary, ever since the first lesson, I hated the math class so much. Every single minute of the class feels like a burden and all the fun that I had with my high school math classes were gone. I hated going to the exercise classes for math and also hated doing the university level math problem sets, as it literary bored me to hell.
I want to know if there is someone else also feels the same way like me or is it just me that's feeling this way? I feel really sad that the subject that I used to enjoy SO MUCH turns out to be so disappointing or not nearly as interesting as I thought before in college.

REPLY [3 votes]: I want to know if there is someone else also feels the same way

Yes, but perhaps not quite as extreme. Like you, I enjoyed math in high school and took many of the math courses that my high school offered, including AP Calculus. Like you, I enjoyed these courses and looked forward to college math.
But that is pretty much where the story ends. College math is not like high school math. It is much more abstract and there is much more emphasis on writing proofs. College math courses also tend to move at a much faster pace than high school courses, covering in a single semester what a high school course might cover in a whole academic year. Students who were good at high school math may find themselves struggling with college math and students who enjoyed math in high school may find themselves bored or frustrated in college. I was definitely among those students.
That's not to say that college math is all bad. College opens the door to mathematics that most high schoolers aren't even aware of. I was lucky that my high school even offered AP Calculus. You'd be hard-pressed to find a high school that offers courses in abstract algebra or real analysis. I encourage you to persist in your studies and perhaps one day you will find math interesting again. Or forget about math entirely. It's really up to you.