The only thing I'd change from this wonderful comment is that it is that hard! It's just that, like any other hard skill, lots of dedicated study and practice makes it easier to do hard things.
What I mean is that before that, I just thought it’s simply too hard for me and the others are smarter or they come from better school. Then, after going through practically 3-5 books for each topic, practically “drilling” exercises, I finally understood why the others “just get it”. It was hard to get myself to sit down, focus, work, practice… but once I worked on a topic for long enough and got better, I realized it’s not magic, I don’t need special talents, and I can just sit down and study most things.
Then, the classes and exams didn’t give me anxiety anymore, I started to enjoy them, treat exams as challenges rather then the step before receiving another failed exam notification…
I studied Physics but switched to software engineering and this experience helped me add another tool to my toolbelt when something gets difficult.
Some perseverance, some time, and we can learn many things. And as you get better, you start to enjoy things.
This is still useful after having left academia, I often look at something and the right "tool" pops up from the toolbox. It helos to understand the world around us and realize how much bullshit we are fed through doctored graphs or tables.