How do I muster up enough to do something so mundane?

Depending on how many assignments and exams you have left, it is still possible to pull yourself up. Perhaps talk to your professor about your situation to see what he/she can do to help. If your school has academic services (which, if available should come with the tuition, whether or not you use them), then I would ask for help there. Tutors there might be able to explain the material better than the professor can.

I understand your frustration to an extent because my math skills are not my strongest either (my math SAT score is evidence of this), yet I got lucky with having good professors who knew what they were lecturing about...

 

No use complaining,
This will sound very harsh,
But the world won't care if you're a wash out,
Many people are worse at Maths,
But they sit down and practice.

Maths is one of those subjects you cannot 'know',
You just have to practice.

If you want to get somewhere in life,
You're going to have to do it for yourself.

 

Well, coming from someone who absolutely detested math in the past, and has repeated just about every course up until now, either due to failing or dropping, I can tell you that it doesn't happen overnight. I'm not sure which math you're taking, specifically, but unlike most other subjects, it actually does require practice, effort, and discipline; there is no churning out an A- paper the night before it's due. You either know the material, or you don't.

It helps to be passionate about a subject, but since most of us aren't natural math geeks, it sometimes takes extra motivation to make it interesting for us, and for me, it involved things like economics and architecture. After learning that certain formulas were used for certain applications, I thought, "that's cool," and things went from there. When you have zero interest in a subject, it makes focusing difficult.

My advice would be to maybe focus on something else for a while, if you're absolutely sure you'll fail at this point, and come back to it later on your own. It's one thing to learn a subject in a classroom setting, with mandatory homework, exams, and lectures, but quite another to read about how ancient Egyptians used based and height to design pyramids, for example.

Save your notes, maybe do a few problems on vacation, and just get familiar with the processes. You don't have to be a whiz by any means, just more comfortable with the *idea* of doing math. Without failure, there wouldn't be success, and you seem to have the first process figured out: that the motivation to pass just wasn't there when you needed it. You're probably like me in high school, repeating basic Algebra for the third time, and completely lost, figuratively. "What's the point?" you might ask.

I passed, finally, but with the least amount of work required to do so, and when I got into later courses, I was much more excited to start, since it was novel, challenging, and best of all, NOT Algebra. It's not entirely our faults: we live in a culture that doesn't value the importance of learning math, and a broken education system that uses outdated methods and is destined to have large failure rates. It's this reason that I've considered studying something that uses even the basics, like accounting, so my own children, should I choose to have them, won't get off to a bad start like I did early on.

Anyway, I have other tips and tricks, but they're more specific and not what you were asking for. If you're interested, though, just ask. They worked for me, someone with average intelligence, so they should definitely be able to work for someone as bright as you. Good luck!

 

What about tutoring? It would help you understand the stuff and you'd surely be more motivated to do something you feel you have at least a bit of a grasp on. You're showing clear symptoms of learned helplessness, and the only way to break through that is to give yourself a chance to succeed just so you can see that it's possible. Once you've done that, it will be easier to keep moving in the right direction.

Good luck!

 

Even if you're really dumb (which I doubt) with enough practice you should be able to do this. Even if it means taking the class over and over, eventually enough of the concepts will sink in.

It's only if you give up that you're guaranteed to fail.

 

You don't have to 'earn' the right to do well in a class. The point of a math class is to learn math, not to prove you're worthy of learning math. This class is just a hoop to jump - it doesn't matter. What matters is knowing the material, so you can use it in whatever situations you might need it in the future.

Besides, if you manage to save your grade now, it'll be through an impressive effort on your part. You'd have done twice the effort of any other student, because you'll have learnt the material in half the time.