Is Spivak's "Calculus" not for me?

I am not sure what to write here/add as a reply tbh.

Majority of the people I know who are math majors (in great universities) didn't even touch Spivak,Rudin,Courant or .... you get the idea. These books are great but, in my opinion, only suitable once you have mastered what the "elementary/basic" stuff is.

You are just beginning high school as i infer, so maybe just go along with your course following a easier "computation based" book (Thomas, Stewart, Schaum or even the dummies book etc) and get used to the basic ideas. Next you can follow up with such GREAT texts and further master the topic.

It is not that you are not intelligent or something else, it is just that these books are meant to be difficult/challenging and you need to give a lot of time since all the concepts are foreign to you. It will take a while to get a hang of it. Give some time to it, no reason to stop pursuing something just because it is very difficult.


P.S. I see no loss in using the generic computation based books used by many just because they lack the theoretical questions or rigor. In fact, such books are the reason why many people can converse well when put in the level of abstractness like in Spivak or Rudin since the key ideas lie in their foundation so well, even if you are aspiring to be a "math major". Rigour can come later, intuition and problem solving are the main jist to be picked up on at first, my two cents.

/r/learnmath Thread