In reply to:

And everything in math was smooth, easy, and great fun till calculus. When I hit calculus, I zoned out and haven't looked back since.

I took everything up to calculus in high school because it was expected of me as a college-bound student and the son of teachers, but I can't say I really had any fun with it. I did what I had to do to get by. In college when I took a calculus class for pre-med, I found I really loved it. It was fascinating and beautiful, and I was actually eager to do my homework after class. The other thing was I read a biography of an Indian mathematician named Ramanujan (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671750615/qid=1026250088/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-0172822-0908611) , which was also fascinating and made me see the creative aspects of the science. That's how I ended up choosing math as a major.