I've always had an interest in history, so when I went through high school history it was an easy class and I never had to work at it.History is so goddamn boring the way it's taught. Why the fuck should I memorize seemingly meaningless names and dates? I always crammed the last minute right before tests so I wouldn't fail and then forgot everything, and I'm paying for it now by knowing fuckall about major historical events. Now that I've graduated high school and can learn history that I'm interested in on my own, history is fucking interesting as shit and I love it. But it was taught in such a terrible way in school (or at least, the schools I went to).
Yeah see, that's how I always felt about math. I loved it so much that it was always easy for me and didn't have to work. I didn't have a natural affinity to history and ended up just hating it. But learning history on my own is so fun because I get to control what content I learn...I learn about the history of things that actually interest me, and I don't start by thinking, "hmm I should really memorize these names and dates because that's what history's all about".